LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE (R) First Edition Ver. 4.02 
 War and Peace                                                    Tolstoy Leo           

                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                      1869                                  
                                                                            
                                 WAR AND PEACE                              
                                                                            
                                 by Leo Tolstoy                             
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
 Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1991, World Library, Inc.       
                                                                            
BK1                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                 BOOK ONE: 1805                             
                                                                            
BK1|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the      
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,      
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by          
that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have             
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer      
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see         
I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."                  
  It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna             
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya           
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man        
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her             
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as         
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in         
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.                                     
  All her invitations without exception, written in French, and             
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:       
  "If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the          
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too              
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-      
Annette Scherer."                                                           
  "Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the         
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing          
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had             
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke      
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but         
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a           
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went        
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,           
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the           
sofa.                                                                       
                                                      {BK1|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  "First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's        
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the               
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even             
irony could be discerned.                                                   
  "Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times        
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are            
staying the whole evening, I hope?"                                         
  "And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I          
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is          
coming for me to take me there."                                            
  "I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these            
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."                          
  "If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would            
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by         
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.             
                                                     {BK1|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  "Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's         
dispatch? You know everything."                                             
  "What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,                
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that               
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to          
burn ours."                                                                 
  Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a           
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty        
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an                
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she      
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to               
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile        
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played             
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual                
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor         
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.                             
  In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna         
burst out:                                                                  
  "Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand             
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.           
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious            
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is      
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to      
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble          
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and             
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than          
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must              
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely           
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot               
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has               
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some        
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.        
The English have not understood and cannot understand the                   
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only      
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And      
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has           
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe          
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg      
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a         
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored          
monarch. He will save Europe!"                                              
                                                     {BK1|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.                      
  "I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been            
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the          
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you         
give me a cup of tea?"                                                      
  "In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am            
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,        
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of           
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good        
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He        
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"                           
  "I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"      
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred          
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive        
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke        
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts        
is a poor creature."                                                        
  Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others          
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it        
for the baron.                                                              
                                                     {BK1|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she         
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or        
was pleased with.                                                           
  "Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her           
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.                      
  As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an        
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with        
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious         
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron             
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.      
  The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the               
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna           
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of      
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,      
so she said:                                                                
  "Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came         
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly          
beautiful."                                                                 
                                                     {BK1|CH1 ^paragraph 25}
  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...."                                          
                                                     {BK1|CH1 ^paragraph 30}
  The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,         
awaiting a reply. He frowned.                                               
  "What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all         
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out           
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active         
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling        
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles         
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse         
and unpleasant.                                                             
  "And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a          
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna         
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.                                             
  "I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my          
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That      
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"                         
  He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a         
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.                                           
                                                     {BK1|CH1 ^paragraph 35}
  "Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"           
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and            
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little          
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of            
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."                                          
  Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory         
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a              
movement of the head that he was considering this information.              
  "Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad         
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand         
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in          
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what      
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"         
  "Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He          
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army          
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is      
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very                
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise           
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here          
tonight."                                                                   
  "Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna             
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange          
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-           
slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She      
is rich and of good family and that's all I want."                          
                                                     {BK1|CH1 ^paragraph 40}
  And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised        
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and        
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.           
  "Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,          
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can        
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my         
apprenticeship as old maid."                                                
                                                                            
BK1|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest           
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age      
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.        
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her            
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and         
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess                    
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was      
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being      
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small              
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,        
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.           
-                                                                           
  *The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.                                
-                                                                           
  To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my         
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or      
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who      
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to        
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna      
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.                      
                                                      {BK1|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom        
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of        
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful      
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of          
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health      
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each                
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left           
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious        
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.                           
  The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a                 
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a        
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her              
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming      
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always      
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness      
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special      
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of            
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life        
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull            
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company         
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were                 
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,         
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her         
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that        
day.                                                                        
  The little princess went round the table with quick, short,               
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her          
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was         
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought      
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all         
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick          
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to        
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."           
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,        
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.       
  "Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone          
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.                                               
  "You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in      
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going      
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she          
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she      
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.                      
                                                     {BK1|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  "What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince            
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.                                                    
  One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with        
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable      
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout        
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known           
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man      
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had         
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this         
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with         
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.           
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and           
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the            
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was          
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety         
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant           
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else          
in that drawing room.                                                       
  "It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor        
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her         
aunt as she conducted him to her.                                           
  Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look           
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to      
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate                 
acquaintance.                                                               
  Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the      
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.         
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know           
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."                              
                                                     {BK1|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very      
interesting but hardly feasible."                                           
  "You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and      
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now                 
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady           
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak      
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big          
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the         
abbe's plan chimerical.                                                     
  "We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.              
  And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,      
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,        
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to           
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands          
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or          
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and               
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna            
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a      
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the             
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid      
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an               
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to        
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to            
another group whose center was the abbe.                                    
  Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna               
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all        
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like         
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of             
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the            
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he      
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he            
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he           
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young         
people are fond of doing.                                                   
                                                                            
BK1|CH3                                                                     
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed          
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,      
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face      
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company        
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed           
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the             
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little         
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump         
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna          
Pavlovna.                                                                   
  The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and           
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out      
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in      
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up          
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a         
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen          
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served          
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly        
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing      
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc              
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were          
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.                          
  "Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,          
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in           
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."                    
  The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness      
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone      
to listen to his tale.                                                      
  "The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of      
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to             
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a      
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest         
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef      
on a hot dish.                                                              
                                                      {BK1|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.            
  "Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the                 
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of        
another group.                                                              
  The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with         
which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly              
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed            
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and        
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,        
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously             
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and            
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days      
were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a            
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so          
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on         
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too        
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish        
its effect.                                                                 
  "How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted           
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something              
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also      
with her unchanging smile.                                                  
  "Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,            
smilingly inclining his head.                                               
                                                     {BK1|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and              
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the      
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful         
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her        
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond               
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and        
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at      
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's             
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.                            
  The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.      
  "Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking      
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."       
  There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking         
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in         
her seat.                                                                   
  "Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she      
took up her work.                                                           
                                                     {BK1|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                                           
                                                     {BK1|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be          
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was             
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of           
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.      
  The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then           
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to          
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon          
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in         
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits        
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter        
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by           
death.                                                                      
  The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point        
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies            
looked agitated.                                                            
  "Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the            
little princess.                                                            
  "Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle            
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of         
the story prevented her from going on with it.                              
                                                     {BK1|CH3 ^paragraph 25}
  The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully         
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a           
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he           
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to      
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe        
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by         
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet             
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,      
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.                                    
  "The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of        
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one             
powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place        
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its           
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would      
save the world!"                                                            
  "But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.              
  At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at             
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The                 
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively                 
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing      
with women.                                                                 
  "I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the        
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have           
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think      
of the climate," said he.                                                   
                                                     {BK1|CH3 ^paragraph 30}
  Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more           
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the          
larger circle.                                                              
                                                                            
BK1|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Just them another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew         
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome             
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.                  
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,        
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little        
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing          
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look      
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so            
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.        
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome          
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned         
the whole company.                                                          
  "You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.                     
  "General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the      
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been             
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."                                  
  "And Lise, your wife?"                                                    
  "She will go to the country."                                             
                                                      {BK1|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  "Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"                
  "Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same                
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has         
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"      
  Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who            
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with         
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he            
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance          
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming         
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.                   
  "There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to           
Pierre.                                                                     
  "I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper        
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the          
vicomte who was continuing his story.                                       
                                                     {BK1|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  "No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's      
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished          
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his             
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.          
  "You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the             
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent      
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me          
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to          
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.            
  His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly         
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more           
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,        
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.                                  
  "Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.                                        
  "Very," said Pierre.                                                      
                                                     {BK1|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna            
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a          
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.          
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever            
women."                                                                     
-                                                                           
  Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew        
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who      
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook              
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had      
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed          
only anxiety and fear.                                                      
  "How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him            
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me        
what news I may take back to my poor boy."                                  
  Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to      
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an           
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might           
not go away.                                                                
                                                     {BK1|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  "What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he         
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.                      
  "Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered              
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I            
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.          
That would be the best way."                                                
  The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the      
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of      
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now            
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her          
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had        
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat             
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened          
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a      
moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more          
tightly.                                                                    
  "Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for         
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my         
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to        
do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"         
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked         
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always              
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.             
  "Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her               
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she      
stood waiting by the door.                                                  
                                                     {BK1|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be               
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having            
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,          
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using        
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her        
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded        
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the      
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners            
that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made      
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and         
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour         
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved          
him.                                                                        
  "My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and        
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;      
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's             
memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the      
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"                          
  "My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your        
kindness!" He turned to go.                                                 
  "Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."        
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich              
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at           
rest, and then..."                                                          
  Prince Vasili smiled.                                                     
                                                     {BK1|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  "No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered         
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that        
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as          
adjutants."                                                                 
  "No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."           
  "Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,           
"we shall be late."                                                         
  "Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"                                 
  "Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"                            
                                                     {BK1|CH4 ^paragraph 35}
  "Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."                          
  "Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,      
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came        
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.         
  Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit                
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone      
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She                
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again        
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her      
task was accomplished.                                                      
                                                                            
BK1|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  "And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at           
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa      
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and            
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions          
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is      
as if the whole world had gone crazy."                                      
  Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a            
sarcastic smile.                                                            
  "'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very          
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in                
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"                        
-                                                                           
  *God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!                   
                                                      {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  "I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run        
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to         
endure this man who is a menace to everything."                             
  "The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite      
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis      
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he              
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward          
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they           
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."                         
  And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.                  
  Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time        
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the          
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde      
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much            
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.                                   
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said        
he.                                                                         
  The princess listened, smiling.                                           
  "If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the        
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which        
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others         
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone         
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French              
society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,      
and then..."                                                                
  He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to      
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,      
who had him under observation, interrupted:                                 
  "The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which              
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,            
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to      
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from      
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the          
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the      
royalist emigrant.                                                          
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                              
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  "'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"          
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting                
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I        
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."                         
  "Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the         
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some        
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,         
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and         
one hero less on earth."                                                    
  Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their               
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the          
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say               
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.                        
  "The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was      
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed              
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole               
responsibility of that deed."                                               
  "Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.          
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  "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."              
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 30}
  "Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.        
  But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.                      
  "No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great          
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,          
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom      
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain          
power."                                                                     
  "Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to         
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have        
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.                              
  "He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he             
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a           
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur            
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his         
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.             
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 35}
  "What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...      
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.            
  "Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.      
  "I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."               
  "Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected          
an ironical voice.                                                          
  "Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most             
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation            
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas           
Napoleon has retained in full force."                                       
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 40}
  "Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at         
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words        
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who            
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached               
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?      
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."       
  Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the        
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment          
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was      
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had        
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was          
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the               
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.                                 
  "But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the         
fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is        
innocent and untried?"                                                      
  "I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the      
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at      
all like the conduct of a great man!"                                       
  "And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the      
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.                                   
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 45}
  "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.                                                         
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 50}
  "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.                                                     
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 55}
  "There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She         
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was      
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."                
  Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with         
difficulty.                                                                 
  "She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a             
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some      
calls.'"                                                                    
  Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long              
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the            
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna             
Pavlovna, did however smile.                                                
  "She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat         
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no           
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world         
knew...."                                                                   
                                                     {BK1|CH5 ^paragraph 60}
  And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had        
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna           
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so             
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the      
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about      
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,        
and when and where.                                                         
                                                                            
BK1|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests          
began to take their leave.                                                  
  Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with         
huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, to enter a               
drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say           
something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he         
was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his            
own, the general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the          
plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his                    
absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it          
was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression.        
Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that         
expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to      
see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my            
dear Monsieur Pierre."                                                      
  When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again            
everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions      
are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am."        
And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.                           
  Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders      
to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened              
indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also      
come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty,             
pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.          
  "Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little                 
princess, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in      
a low voice.                                                                
                                                      {BK1|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match        
she contemplated between Anatole and the little princess'                   
sister-in-law.                                                              
  "I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone.         
"Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au        
revoir!"- and she left the hall.                                            
  Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his          
face close to her, began to whisper something.                              
  Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and         
a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to           
the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of         
understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as           
usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.                            
  "I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince            
Hippolyte "-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not?         
Delightful!"                                                                
                                                     {BK1|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                                               
                                                     {BK1|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                          
                                                     {BK1|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                                                              
                                                     {BK1|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  "What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now,"          
said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white        
hands.                                                                      
  Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his        
eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.                    
  "That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in           
the right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but- I        
do not know how to express it... not by a balance of political              
power...."                                                                  
  It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such              
abstract conversation.                                                      
  "One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you        
at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a           
diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.                
                                                     {BK1|CH6 ^paragraph 30}
  Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.                
  "Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the             
other."                                                                     
  "But you must decide on something! Your father expects it."               
  Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor,      
and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow        
his father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to         
Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to         
anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money.             
Write to me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre        
had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not            
decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was        
speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.                                       
  "But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he      
had met that evening.                                                       
                                                     {BK1|CH6 ^paragraph 35}
  "That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us      
talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?"                          
  "No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to      
tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for         
freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the          
army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in           
the world is not right."                                                    
  Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish            
words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to         
such nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any         
other answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.        
  "If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no         
wars," he said.                                                             
  "And that would be splendid," said Pierre.                                
                                                     {BK1|CH6 ^paragraph 40}
  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!"                                                                        
                                                                            
BK1|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince          
Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it      
had had in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet            
from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a         
house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose           
and politely placed a chair for her.                                        
  "How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly         
and fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married?        
How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for           
saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative         
fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!"                                           
  "And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he      
wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess            
with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their      
intercourse with young women.                                               
  The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the         
quick.                                                                      
  "Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand         
it; I don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars.        
How is it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need         
it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is           
Uncle's aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well              
known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the                
Apraksins' I heard a lady asking, 'Is that the famous Prince                
Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed. "He is so well received                
everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You         
know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were           
speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?"                          
                                                      {BK1|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the        
conversation, gave no reply.                                                
  "When are you starting?" he asked.                                        
  "Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of,"         
said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had      
spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly            
ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.        
"Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must        
be broken off... and then you know, Andre..." (she looked                   
significantly at her husband) "I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered,      
and a shudder ran down her back.                                            
  Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone          
besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a          
tone of frigid politeness.                                                  
  "What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he.        
                                                     {BK1|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                            
                                                     {BK1|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.      
  "No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..."            
  "Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew.         
"You had better go."                                                        
  The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip               
quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about      
the room.                                                                   
  Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him         
and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.        
                                                     {BK1|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                       
                                                     {BK1|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                 
                                                     {BK1|CH7 ^paragraph 30}
  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.                                        
                                                                            
BK1|CH8                                                                     
  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.                                                    
                                                      {BK1|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  "My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of        
those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what          
would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one        
to whom I mention this, because I like you."                                
  As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski      
who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed          
eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his      
thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in           
which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with            
brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at         
ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of          
almost morbid irritation.                                                   
  "You don't understand why I say this," he continued, "but it is           
the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," said        
he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he      
worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had               
nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself        
up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And      
all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and                
torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and         
triviality- these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I          
am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know        
nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic        
wit," continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen          
to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and           
those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and           
women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial        
in everything- that's what women are when you see them in their true        
colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were             
something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't         
marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince Andrew.               
  "It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should                
consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have          
everything before you, everything. And you..."                              
  He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he         
thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.        
                                                     {BK1|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "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."                             
                                                     {BK1|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance- friendly and          
affectionate as it was- expressed a sense of his own superiority.           
  "I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among           
our whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all        
the same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up              
visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so      
badly- all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"               
  "What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging         
his shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"                              
  "I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme      
il faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women,         
'women and wine' I don't understand!"                                       
  Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the             
dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to      
reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.                           
                                                     {BK1|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "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!"                                                            
                                                                            
BK1|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a             
cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending        
to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more        
he felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was         
light enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed         
more like morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre                  
remembered that Anatole Kuragin was expecting the usual set for             
cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout,        
finishing with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.                    
  "I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.                           
  But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go        
there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so          
passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so                  
accustomed to that he decided to go. The thought immediately                
occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrew was of no account,        
because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole to         
come to his gathering; "besides," thought he, "all such 'words of           
honor' are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if      
one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so             
extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all         
the same!" Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort,               
nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kuragin's.          
  Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards' barracks, in which        
Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the               
stairs, and went in at the open door. There was no one in the               
anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there      
was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the            
distance.                                                                   
  Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet                  
dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in        
which were the remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw            
him, was drinking on the sly what was left in the glasses. From the         
third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices,        
the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine           
young men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three others        
were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by the chain and            
trying to set him at the others.                                            
                                                      {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  "I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one.                                
  "Mind, no holding on!" cried another.                                     
  "I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands."        
  "There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on."                              
  "At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth.                          
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  "Jacob, bring a bottle!" shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow        
who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine      
linen shirt unfastened in front. "Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here          
is Petya! Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre.                           
  Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,          
particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober           
ring, cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was           
Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler           
and duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about      
him merrily.                                                                
  "I don't understand. What's it all about?"                                
  "Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole,           
taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.                         
  "First of all you must drink!"                                            
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows        
at the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and           
listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre's glass        
while explaining that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English         
naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the           
outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.            
  "Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last      
glass, "or I won't let you go!"                                             
  "No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to      
the window.                                                                 
  Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and                
distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself               
particularly to Anatole and Pierre.                                         
  Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue             
eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore          
no mustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face,      
was clearly seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely            
curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed         
firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two distinct smiles        
played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this,                
together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes,              
produced an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face.         
Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet, though           
Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov lived with him and      
had placed himself on such a footing that all who knew them, including      
Anatole himself, respected him more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov         
could play all games and nearly always won. However much he drank,          
he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov were at        
that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.          
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented           
anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two           
footmen, who were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions      
and shouts of the gentlemen around.                                         
  Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted        
to smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame,        
but could not move it. He smashed a pane.                                   
  "You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre.                   
  Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame           
out with a crash.                                                           
  "Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov.      
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 25}
  "Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole.       
  "First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of      
rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of         
the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.        
  Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the            
window sill. "Listen!" cried he, standing there and addressing those        
in the room. All were silent.                                               
  "I bet fifty imperials"- he spoke French that the Englishman might        
understand him, but he did, not speak it very well- "I bet fifty            
imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?" added he,                
addressing the Englishman.                                                  
  "No, fifty," replied the latter.                                          
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 30}
  "All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle of        
rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on          
this spot" (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the         
window) "and without holding on to anything. Is that right?"                
  "Quite right," said the Englishman.                                       
  Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the             
buttons of his coat and looking down at him- the Englishman was short-      
began repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.                   
  "Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill      
to attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else          
does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?"      
  The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to      
accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and              
though he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on          
translating Dolokhov's words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar      
of the Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the        
window sill, leaned over, and looked down.                                  
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 35}
  "Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the            
stones of the pavement.                                                     
  "Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad      
jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.               
  Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it             
easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and        
lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he             
adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the      
right and then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought         
two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was               
already quite light. Dolokhov's back in his white shirt, and his curly      
head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the      
Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older        
than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and          
angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dolokhov's shirt.                    
  "I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible          
man.                                                                        
  Anatole stopped him.                                                      
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 40}
  "Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed.            
Eh?... What then?... Eh?"                                                   
  Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands,              
arranged himself on his seat.                                               
  "If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words             
separately through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down         
there. Now then!"                                                           
  Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the            
bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised           
his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped        
to pick up some broken glass remained in that position without              
taking his eyes from the window and from Dolokhov's back. Anatole           
stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways,           
pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran          
to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to        
the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade      
though his features now expressed horror and fear. All were still.          
Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in the same         
position, only his head was thrown further back till his curly hair         
touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted        
higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was              
emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting           
yet further back. "Why is it so long?" thought Pierre. It seemed to         
him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made         
a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously;         
this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the        
sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered          
still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the              
window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered           
his eyes and thought he would never never them again. Suddenly he           
was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on      
the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.                              
  "It's empty."                                                             
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 45}
  He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly.              
Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.                             
  "Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil            
take you!" came from different sides.                                       
  The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the              
money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon        
the window sill.                                                            
  "Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he        
suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a         
bottle. I'll do it.... Bring a bottle!"                                     
  "Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling.                   
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 50}
  "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."                                                                        
                                                     {BK1|CH9 ^paragraph 55}
  And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the           
ground, and began dancing round the room with it.                           
                                                                            
BK1|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess                   
Drubetskaya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on        
the evening of Anna Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the      
Emperor, an exception made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of      
Semenov Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no            
appointment to Kutuzov's staff despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's               
endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna's reception Anna         
Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich                
relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and           
where and where her darling Bory, who had only just entered a regiment      
of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as a            
cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a           
time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August,        
and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join      
them on the march to Radzivilov.                                            
  It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs- the      
mother and the youngest daughter- both named Nataly. Ever since the         
morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going                
continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostova's big house          
on the Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself        
and her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the          
visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one         
another in relays.                                                          
  The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental        
type of face, evidently worn out with childbearing- she had had             
twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness,            
gave her a distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna          
Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya, who as a member of the household was also          
seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the             
visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not              
considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. The        
count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.         
  "I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"- he            
called everyone without exception and without the slightest                 
variation in his tone, "my dear," whether they were above or below him      
in rank- "I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose            
name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be          
offended, ma chere! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come,        
mon cher!" These words he repeated to everyone without exception or         
variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful,              
clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same          
quick, repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned      
to one of those who were still in the drawing room, drew a chair            
toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out his legs and putting his      
hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how      
to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises about the      
weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and        
sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a         
man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see        
some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald         
patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the        
anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the         
large marble dining hall, where tables were being set out for eighty        
people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and         
china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would            
call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of all         
his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table          
would say: "Well, Dmitri, you'll see that things are all as they            
should be? That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it."        
And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.             
  "Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess'         
gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The          
countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with      
her husband's portrait on it.                                               
                                                     {BK1|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  "I'm quite worn out by these callers. However, I'll see her and no        
more. She is so affected. Ask her in," she said to the footman in a         
sad voice, as if saying: "Very well, finish me off."                        
  A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling        
daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.                 
  "Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child...        
at the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so              
delighted..." came the sounds of animated feminine voices,                  
interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and      
the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which         
last out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of        
dresses and say, "I am so delighted... Mamma's health... and                
Countess Apraksina... and then, again rustling, pass into the               
anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation        
was on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and           
celebrated beau of Catherine's day, Count Bezukhov, and about his           
illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna      
Pavlovna's reception.                                                       
  "I am so sorry for the poor count," said the visitor. "He is in such      
bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill           
him!"                                                                       
  "What is that?" asked the countess as if she did not know what the        
visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of         
Count Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times.                               
                                                    {BK1|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  "That's what comes of a modern education," exclaimed the visitor.         
"It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as      
he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible          
things that he has been expelled by the police."                            
  "You don't say so!" replied the countess.                                 
  "He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince        
Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up          
to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it.              
Dolokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back        
to Moscow. Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's        
affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg."               
  "But what have they been up to?" asked the countess.                      
  "They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the             
visitor. "He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy            
woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear                
somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some          
actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men        
do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear        
into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the        
policeman on his back!"                                                     
                                                    {BK1|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  "What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted        
the count, dying with laughter.                                             
  "Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?"                       
  Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.                        
  "It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the          
visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who         
amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so            
well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has        
done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in        
spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite         
declined: I have my daughters to consider."                                 
  "Why do you say this young man is so rich?" asked the countess,           
turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of                  
inattention. "His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also        
is illegitimate."                                                           
                                                    {BK1|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  The visitor made a gesture with her hand.                                 
  "I should think he has a score of them."                                  
  Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation,                 
evidently wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went        
on in society.                                                              
  "The fact of the matter is," said she significantly, and also in a        
half whisper, "everyone knows Count Cyril's reputation.... He has lost      
count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite."                   
  "How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the        
countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man."                              
                                                    {BK1|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  "He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I         
was saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but the        
count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to      
the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death- and he is          
so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from         
Petersburg- no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune,              
Pierre or Prince Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of               
rubles! I know it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself.          
Besides, Cyril Vladimirovich is my mother's second cousin. He's also        
my Bory's godfather," she added, as if she attached no importance at        
all to the fact.                                                            
  "Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on         
some inspection business," remarked the visitor.                            
  "Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, that is a                
pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich,          
hearing how ill he is."                                                     
  "But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke," said the count;      
and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to           
the young ladies. "I can just imagine what a funny figure that              
policeman cut!"                                                             
  And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly         
form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who            
always eats well and, in particular, drinks well. "So do come and dine      
with us!" he said.                                                          
                                                                            
BK1|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably,      
but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they        
now rose and took their leave. The visitor's daughter was already           
smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when         
suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls      
running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a            
girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin         
frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was        
evident that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far.           
Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat            
collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump            
rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.                                           
  The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his            
arms wide and threw them round the little girl who had run in.              
  "Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it      
is. My dear pet!"                                                           
  "Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with        
feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her          
husband.                                                                    
  "How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your            
name day," said the visitor. "What a charming child," she added,            
addressing the mother.                                                      
                                                     {BK1|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life-          
with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook           
her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little        
legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers- was just at         
that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child        
is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her      
flushed face in the lace of her mother's mantilla- not paying the           
least attention to her severe remark- and began to laugh. She laughed,      
and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she        
produced from the folds of her frock.                                       
  "Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha            
managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned               
against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter      
that even the prim visitor could not help joining in.                       
  "Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you," said the          
mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and             
turning to the visitor she added: "She is my youngest girl."                
  Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla,        
glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.        
  The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it        
necessary to take some part in it.                                          
                                                    {BK1|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  "Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of           
yours? A daughter, I suppose?"                                              
  Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish      
things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.                     
  Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna                
Mikhaylovna's son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest          
son; Sonya, the count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya,           
his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were         
obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the               
excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the        
back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the              
conversation had been more amusing than the drawing-room talk of            
society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apraksina. Now and then         
they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.        
  The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from              
childhood, were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though           
not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had      
regular, delicate features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and          
an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper            
lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas      
blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find        
something to say, but failed. Boris on the contrary at once found           
his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had know that        
doll Mimi when she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was        
broken; how she had aged during the five years he had known her, and        
how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he        
glanced at Natasha. She turned away from him and glanced at her             
younger brother, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with              
suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she          
jumped up and rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet        
would carry her. Boris did not laugh.                                       
  "You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the          
carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile.                                
                                                    {BK1|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered,               
returning his smile.                                                        
  Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump      
boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been         
disturbed.                                                                  
                                                                            
BK1|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting         
the young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four      
years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up             
person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender            
little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by         
long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a         
tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her             
slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her        
movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and          
by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a           
pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful              
little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest          
in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her         
eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to      
join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile        
could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear         
that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy         
and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha      
and Boris, escape from the drawing room.                                    
  "Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and             
pointing to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and          
so for friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his           
old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there           
was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department!      
Isn't that friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone.            
  "But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.           
  "They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and               
they'll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My          
dear, there's friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the           
hussars."                                                                   
  The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.                     
                                                     {BK1|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  "It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and      
turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from               
friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation."             
  He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were        
both regarding him with a smile of approbation.                             
  "Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us        
today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him.      
It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging his shoulders and            
speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.               
  "I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't         
wish to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except        
in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.- I don't            
know how to hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the        
flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady             
visitor.                                                                    
  The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any          
moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.         
                                                    {BK1|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  "All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up!         
This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he        
rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,"          
he added, not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile.                       
  The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to        
young Rostov.                                                               
  "What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so         
dull without you," said she, giving him a tender smile.                     
  The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish        
smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation         
without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the          
heart of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of         
his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry         
glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the              
artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All             
Nicholas' animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the          
conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find         
Sonya.                                                                      
  "How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their            
sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went            
out. "Cousinage- dangereux voisinage;"* she added.                          
                                                    {BK1|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  *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.                
                                                    {BK1|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "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."                                                      
                                                    {BK1|CH12 ^paragraph 25}
  "Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our               
mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen."                          
  "And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the              
countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' and went on, evidently      
concerned with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I        
were to be severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what          
they might be up to on the sly" (she meant that they would be               
kissing), "but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come        
running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything.      
Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her          
elder sister I was stricter."                                               
  "Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome          
elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.                                
  But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally           
do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore                 
unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid,           
quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what      
she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone-           
the visitors and countess alike- turned to look at her as if wondering      
why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.                             
  "People are always too clever with their eldest children and try          
to make something exceptional of them," said the visitor.                   
                                                    {BK1|CH12 ^paragraph 30}
  "What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too        
clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned        
out splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera.                    
  The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to            
dinner.                                                                     
  "What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess,         
when she had seen her guests out.                                           
                                                                            
BK1|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the      
conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation      
in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already         
growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not            
coming at once, when she heard the young man's discreet steps               
approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly      
among the flower tubs and hid there.                                        
  Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a           
little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror        
examined his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her        
ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while            
before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha         
was about to call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me,"          
thought she. Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears,           
and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked           
her first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place,      
watching- as under an invisible cap- to see what went on in the world.      
She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering          
to herself, kept looking round toward the drawing-room door. It opened      
and Nicholas came in.                                                       
  "Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he,               
running up to her.                                                          
  "It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya.                    
  "Ah, I know what it is."                                                  
                                                     {BK1|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  "Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!"        
  "So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like           
that, for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand.                     
  Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not             
stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with               
sparkling eyes. "What will happen now?" thought she.                        
  "Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are                  
everything!" said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you."                   
  "I don't like you to talk like that."                                     
                                                    {BK1|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  "Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him         
and kissed her.                                                             
  "Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had          
gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her.          
  "Boris, come here," said she with a sly and significant look. "I          
have something to tell you. Here, here!" and she led him into the           
conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.         
  Boris followed her, smiling.                                              
  "What is the something?" asked he.                                        
                                                    {BK1|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had            
thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.                               
  "Kiss the doll," said she.                                                
  Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not        
reply.                                                                      
  "Don't you want to? Well, then, come here," said she, and went            
further in among the plants and threw down the doll. "Closer, closer!"      
she whispered.                                                              
  She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity        
and fear appeared on her flushed face.                                      
                                                    {BK1|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "And me? Would you like to kiss me?" she whispered almost inaudibly,      
glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying         
from excitement.                                                            
  Boris blushed.                                                            
  "How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still      
more, but he waited and did nothing.                                        
  Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him      
so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and,         
tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.                         
  Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of           
the tubs and stood, hanging her head.                                       
                                                    {BK1|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  "Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..."                    
  "You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in.                              
  "Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four      
years... then I will ask for your hand."                                    
  Natasha considered.                                                       
  "Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender        
little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?"                             
                                                    {BK1|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.                    
  "Settled!" replied Boris.                                                 
  "Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?"                     
  She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the             
adjoining sitting room.                                                     
                                                                            
BK1|CH14                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she          
gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to         
invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished        
to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood,                
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she         
returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but          
pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.               
  "With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There           
are not many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your             
friendship."                                                                
  Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her      
friend's hand.                                                              
  "Vera," she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a           
favorite, "how is it you have so little tact? Don't you see you are         
not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..."                              
  The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all           
hurt.                                                                       
                                                     {BK1|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  "If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied        
as she rose to go to her own room.                                          
  But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples                
sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully.        
Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses         
for her, the first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at           
the other window and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and            
Natasha looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.                            
  It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love;           
but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.        
  "How often have I asked you not to take my things?" she said. "You        
have a room of your own," and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.          
  "In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen.                     
                                                    {BK1|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  "You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued             
Vera. "You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt         
ashamed of you."                                                            
  Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no      
one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered        
in the room with the inkstand in her hand.                                  
  "And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and            
Boris, or between you two? It's all nonsense!"                              
  "Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense,         
speaking very gently.                                                       
  She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to         
everyone.                                                                   
                                                    {BK1|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  "Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!"           
  "All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer.        
"We don't interfere with you and Berg."                                     
  "I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be              
anything wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are         
behaving with Boris."                                                       
  "Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have      
nothing to complain of."                                                    
  "Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really                  
tiresome," said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly.        
(She used the word "diplomat," which was just then much in vogue among      
the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) "Why does she      
bother me?" And she added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand        
it, because you've never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a         
Madame de Genlis and nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by      
Nicholas, was considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure        
is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you        
please," she finished quickly.                                              
                                                    {BK1|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  "I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..."        
  "Well, now you've done what you wanted," put in Nicholas- "said           
unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let's go to the               
nursery."                                                                   
  All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.         
  "The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none      
to anyone."                                                                 
  "Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices             
through the door.                                                           
                                                    {BK1|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant         
effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been          
said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and            
scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still          
colder and calmer.                                                          
-                                                                           
  In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.                  
  "Ah, my dear," said the countess, "my life is not all roses               
either. Don't I know that at the rate we are living our means won't         
last long? It's all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the          
country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows          
what besides! But don't let's talk about me; tell me how you managed        
everything. I often wonder at you, Annette- how at your age you can         
rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those             
ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It's        
quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn't possibly      
do it."                                                                     
  "Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never            
know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you         
love to distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a         
certain pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of      
those big people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an             
interview with So and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two,         
three, or four times- till I get what I want. I don't mind what they        
think of me."                                                               
                                                    {BK1|CH14 ^paragraph 30}
  "Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" asked the countess.         
"You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my                
Nicholas is going as a cadet. There's no one to interest himself for        
him. To whom did you apply?"                                                
  "To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to                   
everything, and put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna      
Mikhaylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she      
had endured to gain her end.                                                
  "Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not            
seen him since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I         
expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said      
the countess, with a smile.                                                 
  "He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna,                  
"overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head          
at all. He said to me, 'I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear         
Princess. I am at your command.' Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very        
kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do         
anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way            
that my position is now a terrible one," continued Anna Mikhaylovna,        
sadly, dropping her voice. "My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and        
makes no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a             
penny and don't know how to equip Boris." She took out her                  
handkerchief and began to cry. "I need five hundred rubles, and have        
only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a state.... My only hope      
now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not assist         
his godson- you know he is Bory's godfather- and allow him something        
for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I        
shall not be able to equip him."                                            
  The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.         
                                                    {BK1|CH14 ^paragraph 35}
  "I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess,           
"that here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all            
alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a      
burden to him, and Bory's life is only just beginning...."                  
  "Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess.             
  "Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish.          
Still, I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and I shall             
speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it's      
really all the same to me when my son's fate is at stake." The              
princess rose. "It's now two o'clock and you dine at four. There            
will just be time."                                                         
  And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the            
most of time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and            
went into the anteroom with him.                                            
  "Good-by, my dear," said she to the countess who saw her to the           
door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, "Wish me      
good luck."                                                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH14 ^paragraph 40}
  "Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the           
count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added:      
"If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the            
house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite            
him, my dear. We will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He         
says Count Orlov never gave such a dinner as ours will be!"                 
                                                                            
BK1|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  "My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as             
Countess Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the        
straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril      
Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother,           
drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and      
tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him.           
Count Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future          
depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you          
so well know how to be."                                                    
  "If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of           
it..." answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it         
for your sake."                                                             
  Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the           
entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to      
be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the        
rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old      
cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses,            
and, hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency         
was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.          
  "We may as well go back," said the son in French.                         
  "My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand        
on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.                      
                                                     {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without          
taking off his cloak.                                                       
  "My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the        
hall porter, I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's         
why I have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my             
friend... I only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying           
here, is he not? Please announce me."                                       
  The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and            
turned away.                                                                
  "Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to      
a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat,         
who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.                
  The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a             
large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes            
briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.                                       
                                                    {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  "My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a            
touch, "you promised me!"                                                   
  The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.                         
  They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to           
the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.                                   
  Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall,        
were about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as      
they entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and              
Prince Vasili came out- wearing a velvet coat with a single star on         
his breast, as was his custom when at home- taking leave of a               
good-looking, dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg           
doctor, Lorrain.                                                            
  "Then it is certain?" said the prince.                                    
                                                    {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  "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..."                                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the          
doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of           
inquiry. The son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow              
suddenly clouded his mother's face, and he smiled slightly.                 
  "Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our      
dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive            
look fixed on her.                                                          
  Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and                
perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging        
the bow turned to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a                
movement of the head and lips indicating very little hope for the           
patient.                                                                    
  "Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It          
is terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris.      
"He wanted to thank you himself."                                           
  Boris bowed again politely.                                               
                                                    {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  "Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you          
have done for us."                                                          
  "I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna                   
Mikhaylovna," said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in          
tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed      
under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than        
he had done in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception.                      
  "Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing        
Boris with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on      
in his usual tone of indifference.                                          
  "I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,"          
replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque          
manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so             
quietly and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.       
  "Are you living with your mother?"                                        
                                                    {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 30}
  "I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding,         
"your excellency."                                                          
  "That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said            
Anna Mikhaylovna.                                                           
  "I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I      
never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that            
unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler          
too, I am told."                                                            
  "But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic      
smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure,      
but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the          
doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again         
expressing deep sorrow.                                                     
  "They give little hope," replied the prince.                              
                                                    {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 35}
  "And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me      
and Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this      
fact ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction.                         
  Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw         
that he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's           
fortune, and hastened to reassure him.                                      
  "If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,"          
said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern,          
"I know his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one          
with him except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She      
bent her head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his             
final duty, Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can            
make things no worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if      
he is so ill. We women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know      
how to say these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it      
may be for me. I am used to suffering."                                     
  Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he           
had done at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid          
of Anna Mikhaylovna.                                                        
  "Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna                
Mikhaylovna?" said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are          
expecting a crisis."                                                        
                                                    {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 40}
  "But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the        
welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a           
Christian..."                                                               
  A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses,        
the count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of           
her body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince         
Vasili turned to her.                                                       
  "Well, how is he?"                                                        
  "Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the         
princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.                     
  "Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy      
smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am        
at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have         
gone through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.                  
                                                    {BK1|CH15 ^paragraph 45}
  The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room      
at Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position         
she had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili      
to take a seat beside her.                                                  
  "Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the      
count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile        
and don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him          
to dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the            
prince.                                                                     
  "On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become             
depressed, "I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young        
man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him."              
  He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight      
of stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms.                                
                                                                            
BK1|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in      
Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and        
sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true.        
Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now            
been for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his                
father's house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade           
would be already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father-      
who were never favorably disposed toward him- would have used it to         
turn the count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his               
arrival went to his father's part of the house. Entering the drawing        
room, where the princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the         
ladies, two of whom were sitting at embroidery frames while a third         
read aloud. It was the eldest who was reading- the one who had met          
Anna Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were embroidering: both were         
rosy and pretty and they differed only in that one had a little mole        
on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre was received as if          
he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess paused in her reading      
and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; the second assumed         
precisely the same expression; while the youngest, the one with the         
mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition, bent over her           
frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she              
foresaw. She drew her wool down through the canvas and, scarcely            
able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the         
pattern.                                                                    
  "How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?"           
  "I recognize you only too well, too well."                                
  "How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual,      
but unabashed.                                                              
  "The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently           
you have done your best to increase his mental sufferings."                 
                                                     {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked.                                
  "Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see        
him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready- it is            
almost time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were         
busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he,           
Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.                                
  Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed         
and said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can      
see him."                                                                   
  And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of         
the sister with the mole.                                                   
  Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house.      
He sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are             
going to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very            
badly; that is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very            
ill, and you must not see him at all."                                      
                                                    {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole          
time in his rooms upstairs.                                                 
  When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his         
room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at        
the wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and               
glaring savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his           
walk, muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and               
gesticulating.                                                              
  "England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger          
at someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the         
rights of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre- who at that           
moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just           
effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured        
London- could pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and            
handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left        
Moscow when Boris was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten            
him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the         
hand with a friendly smile.                                                 
  "Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile.          
"I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not        
well."                                                                      
  "Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,"              
answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.                 
                                                    {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it      
necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least          
embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.                           
  "Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a         
considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.                    
  "Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his          
son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how      
we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an           
age..."                                                                     
  "You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and              
slightly sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna                 
Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is        
Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot."                                 
  Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.      
                                                    {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One         
has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well,         
now we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne             
expedition? The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon          
gets across the Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible.          
If only Villeneuve doesn't make a mess of things!                           
  Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read         
the papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name.        
  "We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal      
than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know            
nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy      
with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and        
your father."                                                               
  Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his                
companion's sake that the latter might say something he would               
afterwards regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly,          
looking straight into Pierre's eyes.                                        
  "Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on.                
"Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune,           
though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..."       
                                                    {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  "Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid."          
  Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say         
something disconcerting to himself.                                         
  "And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not          
changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is        
trying to get something out of the rich man?"                               
  "So it does," thought Pierre.                                             
  "But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are         
quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are      
very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that        
your father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and        
neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him."          
                                                    {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 30}
  For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he          
jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick,         
clumsy way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a        
feeling of mingled shame and vexation.                                      
  "Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I         
know very well..."                                                          
  But Boris again interrupted him.                                          
  "I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You      
must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being           
put at ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make      
it a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you          
come to dinner at the Rostovs'?"                                            
  And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and      
extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,      
became quite pleasant again.                                                
                                                    {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 35}
  "No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful          
fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you           
don't know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we         
were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite                
understand. I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the      
courage, but it's splendid. I am very glad to have made your                
acquaintance. It's queer," he added after a pause, "that you should         
have suspected me!" He began to laugh. "Well, what of it! I hope we'll      
get better acquainted," and he pressed Boris' hand. "Do you know, I         
have not once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I        
am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?"                            
  "And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked      
Boris with a smile.                                                         
  Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the      
same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of           
the Boulogne expedition.                                                    
  A footman came in to summon Boris- the princess was going. Pierre,        
in order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to            
dinner, and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his         
spectacles into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing      
up and down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an                 
imaginary foe with his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance      
of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute young man.                      
  As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a            
lonely life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man         
and made up his mind that they would be friends.                            
                                                    {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 40}
  Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her        
eyes and her face was tearful.                                              
  "It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may      
I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be         
left like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces      
put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare               
him!... Adieu, Prince! May God support you..."                              
  "Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her.          
  "Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when          
they were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody."                  
  "I don't understand, Mamma- what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked        
the son.                                                                    
                                                    {BK1|CH16 ^paragraph 45}
  "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.                        
                                                                            
BK1|CH17                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count         
Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all      
alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.              
  "What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid      
who kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then        
I'll find you another place."                                               
  The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating             
poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with         
her always found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking      
to her with exaggerated politeness.                                         
  "I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid.                              
  "Ask the count to come to me."                                            
                                                     {BK1|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look      
as usual.                                                                   
  "Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to          
have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras            
were not ill-spent. He is worth it!"                                        
  He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands            
ruffling his gray hair.                                                     
  "What are your commands, little countess?"                                
  "You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his         
waistcoat. "It's, the saute, most likely," she added with a smile.          
"Well, you see, Count, I want some money."                                  
                                                    {BK1|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  Her face became sad.                                                      
  "Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out         
his pocketbook.                                                             
  "I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking      
out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat.      
  "Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out          
in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call         
will rush to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!"                         
  Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the               
count's house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the      
room.                                                                       
                                                    {BK1|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  "This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the              
deferential young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a         
moment, "yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't           
bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean         
ones for the countess."                                                     
  "Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing             
deeply.                                                                     
  "When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me      
to inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the         
count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always         
a sign of approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it            
brought at once?"                                                           
  "Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess."                   
  "What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile            
when the young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible' with      
him. That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible."                        
                                                    {BK1|CH17 ^paragraph 20}
  "Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,"        
said the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum."                    
  "You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the          
count, and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study.         
  When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money,           
all in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the             
countess' little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something         
was agitating her.                                                          
  "Well, my dear?" asked the countess.                                      
  "Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is        
so ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..."           
                                                    {BK1|CH17 ^paragraph 25}
  "Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began,         
with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified,               
elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.           
  Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be        
ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.                    
  "This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."                              
  Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess      
wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were        
kindhearted, and because they- friends from childhood- had to think         
about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....      
But those tears were pleasant to them both.                                 
                                                                            
BK1|CH18                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests,        
was already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen        
into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.      
From time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were      
expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le              
terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but           
for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was        
known to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and                   
Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her, laughed privately at           
her rudenesses, and told good stories about her, while none the less        
all without exception respected and feared her.                             
  In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of      
war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the                   
recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew      
it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were      
smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his          
head first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers            
with evident pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two           
neighbors, whom he egged on against each other.                             
  One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and           
wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a            
most fashionable young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as          
if quite at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his         
mouth, was inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his             
eyes. This was an old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a      
man with "a sharp tongue" as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to      
be condescending to his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer        
of the Guards, irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held           
his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled        
the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This         
was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenov regiment with whom           
Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom Natasha had,           
teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her "intended."           
The count sat between them and listened attentively. His favorite           
occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very fond of,        
was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting two           
loquacious talkers at one another.                                          
  "Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich,"            
said Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary             
Russian expressions with the choicest French phrases- which was a           
peculiarity of his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur          
l'etat;* you want to make something out of your company?"                   
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK1|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  *You expect to make an income out of the government.                      
-                                                                           
  "No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry           
the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own      
position now, Peter Nikolaevich..."                                         
  Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His        
conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain            
calm and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no              
direct bearing on himself. He could remain silent for hours without         
being at all put out of countenance himself or making others                
uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned himself he         
would begin to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.         
  "Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I         
should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even         
with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and         
thirty," said he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful,          
pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must          
always be the chief desire of everyone else.                                
                                                    {BK1|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  "Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I         
shall be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies      
occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what         
can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a      
little aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting      
a smoke ring.                                                               
  "La balance y est...* A German knows how to skin a flint, as the          
proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side of      
his mouth and winking at the count.                                         
-                                                                           
  *So that squares matters.                                                 
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK1|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that                
Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or         
indifference, continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards        
he had already gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps;        
how in wartime the company commander might get killed and he, as            
senior in the company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular        
he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was      
with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not            
seem to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests.           
But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his              
youthful egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed his hearers.              
  "Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go- foot or horse- that      
I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking        
his feet off the sofa.                                                      
  Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the             
drawing room.                                                               
-                                                                           
  It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled             
guests, expecting the summons to zakuska,* avoid engaging in any            
long conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in         
order to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The        
host and hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at           
one another, and the visitors try to guess from these glances who,          
or what, they are waiting for- some important relation who has not yet      
arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready.                                   
                                                    {BK1|CH18 ^paragraph 20}
-                                                                           
  *Hors d'oeuvres.                                                          
-                                                                           
  Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in           
the middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come               
across, blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make           
him talk, but he went on naively looking around through his spectacles      
as if in search of somebody and answered all her questions in               
monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not           
notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the         
bear, looked with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering        
how such a clumsy, modest fellow could have played such a prank on a        
policeman.                                                                  
  "You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him.                   
                                                    {BK1|CH18 ^paragraph 25}
  "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."                                                       
                                                    {BK1|CH18 ^paragraph 30}
  The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter          
understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and        
sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he         
answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other      
guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It         
was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was             
heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.           
  "Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there.                            
  "Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna         
entered the room.                                                           
  All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very        
oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,           
holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood         
surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if         
rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.                  
  "Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to         
her children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned        
all others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the             
count who was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I           
daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old        
man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed          
to the girls. "You must look for husbands for them whether you like it      
or not...."                                                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH18 ^paragraph 35}
  Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called      
Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up           
fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl,         
but I like her."                                                            
  She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge                
reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with        
the pleasure of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and               
addressed herself to Pierre.                                                
  "Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high         
tone of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up        
her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a            
childlike way through his spectacles.                                       
  "Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell      
your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my        
evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to        
follow, for this was dearly only a prelude.                                 
  "A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed      
and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame,        
sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war."                 
                                                    {BK1|CH18 ^paragraph 40}
  She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly          
keep from laughing.                                                         
  "Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya                 
Dmitrievna.                                                                 
  The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed      
on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them             
because Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna         
Mikhaylovna with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling           
Julie Karagina went in with Nicholas. After them other couples              
followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children,      
tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving           
about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the           
guests settled down in their places. Then the strains of the count's        
household band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the        
voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of        
the table sat the countess with Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna      
Mikhaylovna on her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At      
the other end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and        
Shinshin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the          
long table on one side sat the grownup young people: Vera beside Berg,      
and Pierre beside Boris; and on the other side, the children,               
tutors, and governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit        
vases the count kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its         
light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors' glasses, not           
neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without omitting her              
duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the                
pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their          
redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies'      
end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the men's end      
the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel        
of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so much        
that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with      
tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a          
heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the           
guests were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting            
opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a         
great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and        
went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the            
wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in      
a napkin, from behind the next man's shoulders and whispered: "Dry          
Madeira"... "Hungarian"... or "Rhine wine" as the case might be. Of         
the four crystal glasses engraved with the count's monogram that stood      
before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank with              
enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests.      
Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen        
look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the          
first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny         
lively little girl's look made him inclined to laugh without knowing        
why.                                                                        
  Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina,          
to whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya         
wore a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now           
she turned pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what      
Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept           
looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might      
be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to remember           
all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full        
description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt             
greatly offended when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin          
passed him by. He frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want           
any of that wine, but was mortified because no one would understand         
that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted      
it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.                   
                                                                            
BK1|CH19                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more                 
animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had             
already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself        
seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in            
chief.                                                                      
  "And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked             
Shinshin. "He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our        
turn next."                                                                 
  The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted        
to the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's            
remark.                                                                     
  "It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a            
German accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He                
declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze            
danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as      
vell as ze sanctity of its alliances..." he spoke this last word            
with particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.            
  Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he          
repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:                           
                                                     {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  ... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and                
absolute aim- to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations- has         
now decided him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a         
new condition for the attainment of that purpose.                           
  "Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of          
wine with dignity and looking to the count for approval.                    
  "Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but          
turn spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and            
smiling. "Cela nous convient a merveille.*[2] Suvorov now- he knew          
what he was about; yet they beat him a plate couture,*[3] and where         
are we to find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"*[4] said he,          
continually changing from French to Russian.                                
-                                                                           
  *Do you know the proverb?                                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  *[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.           
                                                    {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
  "I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up,               
turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as            
much decision and desperation as though he were at that moment              
facing some great danger. "I am convinced that we Russians must die or      
conquer," he concluded, conscious- as were others- after the words          
were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for        
the occasion and were therefore awkward.                                    
  "What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie.            
  Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them           
and down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.             
  Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly.           
  "That's fine," said he.                                                   
                                                    {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 20}
  "The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping      
the table.                                                                  
  "What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya                
Dmitrievna's deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the         
table. "What are you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the           
hussar, "and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French         
are here?"                                                                  
  "I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile.                
  "It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You          
know my son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going."                    
  "I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in        
God's hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a              
battle," replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried        
the whole length of the table.                                              
                                                    {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 25}
  "That's true!"                                                            
  Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end      
and the men's at the other.                                                 
  "You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you         
won't ask!"                                                                 
  "I will," replied Natasha.                                                
  Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She        
half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to      
what was coming, and turning to her mother:                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 30}
  "Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,        
audible the whole length of the table.                                      
  "What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her             
daughter's face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her        
sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.             
  The conversation was hushed.                                              
  "Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice            
sounded still more firm and resolute.                                       
  The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook        
her fat finger.                                                             
                                                    {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 35}
  "Cossack!" she said threateningly.                                        
  Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at         
the elders.                                                                 
  "You had better take care!" said the countess.                            
  "Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried            
boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken          
in good part.                                                               
  Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.                      
                                                    {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 40}
  "You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and      
to Pierre, glancing at him again.                                           
  "Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.              
  Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even      
Marya Dmitrievna.                                                           
  "Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice             
cream."                                                                     
  "Carrot ices."                                                            
                                                    {BK1|CH19 ^paragraph 45}
  "No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed;        
"I want to know!"                                                           
  Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the         
guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer        
but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who        
had dared to treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.                        
  Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be          
pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band        
again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests,             
leaving their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and            
reached across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the          
children, and with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs      
scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered but with           
redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing room and to the            
count's study.                                                              
                                                                            
BK1|CH20                                                                    
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the          
count's visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms,         
some in the sitting room, some in the library.                              
  The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty        
from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at               
everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered        
round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played              
first. After she had played a little air with variations on the             
harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natasha and              
Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent, to sing                  
something. Natasha, who was treated as though she were grown up, was        
evidently very proud of this but at the same time felt shy.                 
  "What shall we sing?" she said.                                           
  "'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.                                        
  "Well, then,let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But         
where is Sonya?"                                                            
                                                     {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
  She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room           
ran to look for her.                                                        
  Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran          
to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that      
she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage           
was the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the          
Rostov household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on        
Nurse's dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy      
pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and         
sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook.               
Natasha's face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint's          
day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed      
down her broad neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.                   
  "Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And        
Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she          
began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was        
crying. Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and           
hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the          
blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort             
Sonya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.                      
  "Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have           
come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she          
showed a paper she held in her hand- with the verses Nicholas had           
written, "still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can              
understand... what a soul he has!"                                          
  And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.              
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  "It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and         
Boris also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice...         
there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin...      
one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it           
can't be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the      
countess as her mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling               
Nicholas' career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God        
is my witness," and she made the sign of the cross, "I love her so          
much, and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to        
her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice               
everything, only I have nothing...."                                        
  Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in      
the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that      
she understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.                     
  "Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true           
reason of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to         
you since dinner? Hasn't she?"                                              
  "Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some               
others, and she found them on my table and said she'd show them to          
Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him      
to marry me, but that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with         
her all day... Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..."                 
  And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha            
lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began            
comforting her.                                                             
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 15}
  "Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you             
remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting        
room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't        
quite remember how, but don't you remember that it could all be             
arranged and how nice it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has      
married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know.         
And Boris says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all           
about it. And he is so clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you        
cry, Sonya, dear love, darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed.      
"Vera's spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right and she           
won't say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself, and he         
doesn't care at all for Julie."                                             
  Natasha kissed her on the hair.                                           
  Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it        
seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin        
playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.                        
  "Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her      
frock and hair.                                                             
  "Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that           
had strayed from under her friend's plaits.                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 20}
  Both laughed.                                                             
  "Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"                                    
  "Come along!"                                                             
  "Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said      
Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!"                              
  And she set off at a run along the passage.                               
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 25}
  Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the      
verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran        
after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face      
and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people          
sang the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted.         
Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:                              
-                                                                           
     At nighttime in the moon's fair glow                                   
       How sweet, as fancies wander free,                                   
     To feel that in this world there's one                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 30}
       Who still is thinking but of thee!                                   
-                                                                           
     That while her fingers touch the harp                                  
       Wafting sweet music music the lea,                                   
     It is for thee thus swells her heart,                                  
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 35}
       Sighing its message out to thee...                                   
-                                                                           
     A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,                                     
       But oh! till then I cannot live!...                                  
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 40}
  He had not finished the last verse before the young people began          
to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and      
the coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.                  
-                                                                           
  Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged         
him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political                 
conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre.         
When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre      
said, laughing and blushing:                                                
  "Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."                           
  "I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you          
will be my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the        
slender little girl.                                                        
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 45}
  While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning      
up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly          
happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She        
was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a                
grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had         
given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman               
(heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked with her        
partner, fanning herself and smiling over the fan.                          
  "Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she             
crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.                                  
  Natasha blushed and laughed.                                              
  "Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be                 
surprised at?"                                                              
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 50}
  In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs         
being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya             
Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more             
distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves           
after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks,          
entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count,            
both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony              
somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He      
drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and          
as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped           
his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing      
the first violin:                                                           
  "Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"                                   
  This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his           
youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the              
anglaise.)                                                                  
  "Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite           
forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her        
curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her               
laughter.                                                                   
  And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure          
at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout         
partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened         
his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot,            
and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more,                
prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the               
provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling             
those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of         
the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs- the men on         
one side and the women on the other- who with beaming faces had come        
to see their master making merry.                                           
                                                    {BK1|CH20 ^paragraph 55}
  "Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked         
the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.                             
  The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did      
not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her                
powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the              
countess), and only her stern but handsome face really joined in the        
dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count's plump figure, in      
Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming         
face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more and more            
into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness          
of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on      
his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight      
exertions- the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms          
when turning, or stamp her foot- which everyone appreciated in view of      
her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and                 
livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment's attention          
to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were             
watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone      
by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look at Papa!" though as it was         
they never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the          
dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the                 
musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more         
lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round Marya         
Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his           
partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft      
foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a            
wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led        
by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping         
their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.                               
  "That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count.      
  "That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up        
her sleeves and puffing heavily.                                            
                                                                            
BK1|CH21                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXI                                                               
-                                                                           
  While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being               
danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while         
tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had         
a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a         
mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man,               
preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there      
was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside        
the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid                
whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important         
order for an expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who        
had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the            
count's health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to         
the celebrated grandee of Catherine's court, Count Bezukhov.                
  The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up             
respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an        
hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging           
their bows and trying to escape as quickly as from the glances fixed        
on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince          
Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,           
escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times          
in low tones.                                                               
  When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all           
alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the            
other, leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his         
hand. After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him          
with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the            
long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the          
eldest princess.                                                            
  Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous           
whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying             
man's room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or            
expectancy at his door, which creaked slightly when opened.                 
  "The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed,"        
said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was        
listening naively to his words.                                             
                                                     {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 5}
  "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."                 
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 10}
  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?"                                              
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                   
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                               
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room.      
  In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning         
before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt        
pastilles. The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture,             
whatnots, cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white          
feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to          
bark.                                                                       
  "Ah, is it you, cousin?"                                                  
  She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely           
smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and             
covered with varnish.                                                       
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                                                               
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 35}
  "I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her             
unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the        
prince, she prepared to listen.                                             
  "I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't."                         
  "Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending          
it downwards as was his habit.                                              
  It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both            
understood without naming.                                                  
  The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for         
her legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion          
in her prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up          
at the icons with a sigh. This might have been taken as an                  
expression of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting      
before long. Prince Vasili understood it as an expression of                
weariness.                                                                  
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 40}
  "And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn         
out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a      
very serious talk."                                                         
  Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously,      
now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant            
expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His          
eyes too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly           
and at the next glanced round in alarm.                                     
  The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony        
hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved      
not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.      
  "Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,"        
continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not             
without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of      
everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love           
you all, like children of my own, as you know."                             
  The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the        
same dull expression.                                                       
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 45}
  "And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince          
Vasili went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at      
her. "You know, Catiche, that we- you three sisters, Mamontov, and          
my wife- are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it      
is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me;        
but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for            
anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing          
to his portrait, "definitely demanded that he should be called."            
  Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not         
make out whether she was considering what he had just said or               
whether she was simply looking at him.                                      
  "There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she      
replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow        
his noble soul peacefully to leave this..."                                 
  "Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently,             
rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little        
table that he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you         
know yourself that last winter the count made a will by which he            
left all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre."          
  "He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he        
cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate."                 
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 50}
  "But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little         
table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if         
a letter has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for        
Pierre's legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of           
the count's services, his request would be granted?..."                     
  The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about           
the subject under discussion than those they are talking with.              
  "I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand,         
"that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew      
of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not,          
then as soon as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate          
what he meant by the words all is over, "and the count's papers are         
opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and           
the petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything          
as the legitimate son."                                                     
  "And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if             
anything might happen, only not that.                                       
  "But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be        
the legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must           
know, my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether        
they have been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been              
overlooked, you ought to know where they are, and must find them,           
because..."                                                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 55}
  "What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and           
not changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you             
think we are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot        
inherit... un batard!"* she added, as if supposing that this                
translation of the word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the        
invalidity of his contention.                                               
-                                                                           
  *A bastard.                                                               
-                                                                           
  "Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so                  
intelligent, how is it you don't see that if the count has written a        
letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate,        
it follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count             
Bezukhov, and will then inherit everything under the will? And if           
the will and letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing           
but the consolation of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit!*        
That's certain."                                                            
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 60}
-                                                                           
  *And all that follows therefrom.                                          
-                                                                           
  "I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and        
you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the              
princess with the expression women assume when they suppose they are        
saying something witty and stinging.                                        
  "My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili               
impatiently, "I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about        
your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I      
tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and           
the will in Pierre's favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear      
girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me,      
then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich"        
(the family solicitor) "and he says the same."                              
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 65}
  At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas;      
her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her           
voice when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she        
herself evidently did not expect.                                           
  "That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and      
I don't now."                                                               
  She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.             
  "And this is gratitude- this is recognition for those who have            
sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid!             
Fine! I don't want anything, Prince."                                       
  "Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..."            
replied Prince Vasili.                                                      
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 70}
  But the princess did not listen to him.                                   
  "Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could           
expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and                    
ingratitude- the blackest ingratitude- in this house..."                    
  "Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince           
Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than ever.                                
  "Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and           
sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has      
been intriguing!"                                                           
  The princees wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand.         
She had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole             
human race. She gave her companion an angry glance.                         
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 75}
  "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."                                                               
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 80}
  "Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing- I know!" cried         
the princess.                                                               
  "That's not the point, my dear."                                          
  "It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that        
Anna Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the               
infamous, vile woman!"                                                      
  "Do not let us lose any time..."                                          
  "Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here           
and told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us,                  
especially about Sophie- I can't repeat them- that it made the count        
quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was      
then he wrote this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was        
invalid."                                                                   
                                                    {BK1|CH21 ^paragraph 85}
  "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!"                                                        
                                                                            
BK1|CH22                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXII                                                              
-                                                                           
  While these conversations were going on in the reception room and         
the princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent         
for) and Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him)         
was driving into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels         
rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna,         
having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he      
was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre           
followed Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began          
to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him.          
He noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the          
back door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two            
men, who looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and      
hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed         
several other men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house        
on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the         
coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took any notice of        
them. "It seems to be all right," Pierre concluded, and followed            
Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone         
staircase, calling to Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow.            
Though he did not see why it was necessary for him to go to the             
count at all, still less why he had to go by the back stairs, yet           
judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of assurance and haste, Pierre            
concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the              
stairs they were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying              
pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These men           
pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass           
and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.                 
  "Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna               
Mikhaylovna of one of them.                                                 
  "Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were        
now permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am."                             
  "Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he               
reached the landing. "I'd better go to my own room."                        
  Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up.                    
                                                     {BK1|CH22 ^paragraph 5}
  "Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her           
son's when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no          
less than you do, but be a man!"                                            
  "But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at        
her over his spectacles.                                                    
  "Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done            
you. Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death."        
She sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust              
yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests."                 
  Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this        
had to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who        
was already opening a door.                                                 
  This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the          
princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been      
in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of         
these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past      
with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the      
princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The             
first door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid        
with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything          
in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna           
Mikhaylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where           
Prince Vasili and the eldest princess were sitting close together           
talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious             
impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of              
desperation slammed the door with all her might.                            
                                                    {BK1|CH22 ^paragraph 10}
  This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear                
depicted on Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity         
that Pierre stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his      
guide. Anna Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly        
and sighed, as if to say that this was no more than she had expected.       
  "Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in      
reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.                 
  Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what      
"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these          
things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit        
room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those              
sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front           
approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and          
water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a      
censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them.      
They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian      
windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full         
length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still          
sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one      
another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn         
Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre      
who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.                                 
  Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the                
decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg         
lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even        
more boldly than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her      
the person the dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured.      
Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing the            
count's confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble,         
not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and                
respectfully received the blessing first of one and then of another         
priest.                                                                     
  "God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the             
priests; "all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man        
is the count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!"       
                                                    {BK1|CH22 ^paragraph 15}
  Having said this she went up to the doctor.                               
  "Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is           
there any hope?"                                                            
  The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his          
shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her          
shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved            
away from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful        
and tenderly sad voice, she said:                                           
  "Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit        
and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone           
was watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind         
it.                                                                         
  Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly,         
moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna        
had disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned          
to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed          
that they whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him        
with a kind of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had           
never before received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had        
been talking to the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an              
aide-de-camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the         
doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to            
make way for him. At first Pierre wished to take another seat so as         
not to trouble the lady, and also to pick up the glove himself and          
to pass round the doctors who were not even in his way; but all at          
once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he was a              
person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone            
expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to accept their            
services. He took the glove in silence from the aide-de-camp, and           
sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands symmetrically          
on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue, and               
decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in           
order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on         
his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the            
will of those who were guiding him.                                         
                                                    {BK1|CH22 ^paragraph 20}
  Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect           
majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three      
stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the              
morning; his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and        
noticed Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never          
used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain               
whether it was firmly fixed on.                                             
  "Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is            
well!" and he turned to go.                                                 
  But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated,        
not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the           
count," yet ashamed to call him "father."                                   
  "He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my                
friend..."                                                                  
  Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"         
suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili          
in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of        
illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went        
through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his        
whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him,           
and the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the           
door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about,      
and at last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but      
resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly      
on the arm said:                                                            
                                                    {BK1|CH22 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                                         
                                                                            
BK1|CH23                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its      
walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the      
columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side           
and on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly             
illuminated with red light like a Russian church during evening             
service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in        
that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed,        
Pierre saw- covered to the waist by a bright green quilt- the               
familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that          
gray mane of hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a          
lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his                 
handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his large thick          
hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was lying palm          
downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb,        
and an old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in          
position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over      
their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in their        
hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service. A little behind          
them stood the two younger princesses holding handkerchiefs to their        
eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a        
vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though          
declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she           
glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and                 
all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door near the            
strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the invalid          
chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on the        
carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose, and      
was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward each      
time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety and        
resignation to the will of God. "If you do not understand these             
sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so much the worse for you!"           
  Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;      
the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently             
crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the             
subdued chanting of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and        
the shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna        
Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she        
quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre         
was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by             
observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand            
that held the taper.                                                        
  Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the             
mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and        
remained with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing              
Pierre she again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look          
at him without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be      
out of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In         
the midst of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased,         
they whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding the      
count's hand got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna      
stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to               
Lorrain from behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he           
was leaning against one of the columns in a respectful attitude             
implying that he, a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith,        
understood the full importance of the rite now being performed and          
even approved of it. He now approached the sick man with the noiseless      
step of one in full vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers          
raised from the green quilt the hand that was free, and turning             
sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The sick man was given      
something to drink, there was a stir around him, then the people            
resumed their places and the service continued. During this interval        
Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which he had            
been leaning, and- with air which intimated that he knew what he was        
about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse         
for them- did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined         
the eldest princess, and moved with her to the side of the room             
where stood the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the      
bed both Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back door, but      
returned to their places one after the other before the service was         
concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to         
the rest of what went on, having made up his mind once for all that         
what he saw happening around him that evening was in some way               
essential.                                                                  
  The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest           
was heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received      
the sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as               
before. Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and           
whispers, among which Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct.             
  Pierre heard her say:                                                     
                                                     {BK1|CH23 ^paragraph 5}
  "Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be                 
impossible..."                                                              
  The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and                
servants that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face            
with its gray mane- which, though he saw other faces as well, he had        
not lost sight of for a single moment during the whole service. He          
judged by the cautious movements of those who crowded round the             
invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.       
  "Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the            
servants say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath.          
Here!" exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the           
bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the        
weight they were carrying were too much for them.                           
  As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young         
man he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the      
dying man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders,            
raised by those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his          
gray, curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow        
and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic         
expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the         
same as Pierre remembered it three months before, when the count had        
sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly            
with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze        
fixed itself upon nothing.                                                  
  After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who           
had carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched                
Pierre's hand and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on          
which the sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the      
ceremony just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the           
pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk              
quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing         
straight at him, but with a look the significance of which could not        
be understood by mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that        
as long as one has eyes they must look somewhere, or it meant too           
much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do, and glanced                 
inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made a hurried sign with         
her eyes, glancing at the sick man's hand and moving her lips as if to      
send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to          
touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the        
large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single muscle of           
the count's face stirred. Once more Pierre looked questioningly at          
Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna            
with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre           
obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna           
Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively          
symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that           
his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to      
look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who still gazed          
at the spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat down. Anna           
Mikhaylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the              
pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the            
father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre              
seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count's         
face began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth           
was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre realize how near death           
his father was), and from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct,        
hoarse sound. Anna Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man's         
eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre,          
then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an inquiring                
whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the sick           
man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who         
stood constantly at the head of the bed.                                    
                                                    {BK1|CH23 ^paragraph 10}
  "Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up      
to turn the count's heavy body toward the wall.                             
  Pierre rose to help him.                                                  
  While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back          
helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward.               
Whether he noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded            
that lifeless arm, or whether some other thought flitted across his         
dying brain, at any rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's      
terror-stricken face, and again at the arm, and on his face a               
feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his               
features, that seemed to deride his own helplessness. At sight of this      
smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling      
in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The sick man was turned on          
to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.                           
  "He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the          
princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go."            
  Pierre went out.                                                          
                                                                            
BK1|CH24                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXIV                                                              
-                                                                           
  There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili           
and the eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of             
Catherine the Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre         
and his companion they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the         
princess hide something as she whispered:                                   
  "I can't bear the sight of that woman."                                   
  "Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said              
Prince Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor          
Anna Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out."                                
  To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic            
squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the      
small drawing room.                                                         
  "There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup          
of this delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of           
restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese        
handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid      
in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count          
Bezukhov's house that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre      
well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors           
and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not      
know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the              
ladies who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds      
and pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the             
brilliantly lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several        
times. Now this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one          
small table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the      
middle of the night a motley throng of people sat there, not                
merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and betraying by every word           
and movement that they none of them forgot what was happening and what      
was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though      
he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly at his              
monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe to the                 
reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the eldest             
princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a        
short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside           
the princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.              
                                                     {BK1|CH24 ^paragraph 5}
  "Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not           
necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the          
same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.      
  "But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but            
impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other      
from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment            
when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul        
is already prepared..."                                                     
  Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar                 
attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which      
were so flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching               
violently; but he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the        
two ladies were saying.                                                     
  "Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases.           
You know how fond the count is of her."                                     
  "I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the        
two ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid              
portfolio she held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is        
in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...."             
                                                    {BK1|CH24 ^paragraph 10}
  She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to        
bar her path.                                                               
  "I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the      
portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.          
"Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je            
vous en conjure..."                                                         
  The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the         
portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the      
princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna               
Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost          
none of its honeyed firmness and softness.                                  
  "Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place          
in a family consultation; is it not so, Prince?"                            
  "Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so          
loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled.            
"Why do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to          
interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room?      
Intriguer!" she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the      
portfolio.                                                                  
                                                    {BK1|CH24 ^paragraph 15}
  But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold          
on the portfolio, and changed her grip.                                     
  Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise,             
"this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you."                                  
  The princess let go.                                                      
  "And you too!"                                                            
  But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.                                    
                                                    {BK1|CH24 ^paragraph 20}
  "Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will        
go and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?"                               
  "But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn                
sacrament, allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your         
opinion," said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite         
close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the                
princess which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of         
Prince Vasili.                                                              
  "Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince         
Vasili severely. "You don't know what you are doing."                       
  "Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna          
Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.                           
  Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.                     
                                                    {BK1|CH24 ^paragraph 25}
  At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so            
long and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and         
banged against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed         
out wringing her hands.                                                     
  "What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you          
leave me alone with him!"                                                   
  Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping,             
quickly caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom.        
The eldest princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed      
her. A few minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard        
face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression          
showed an irrepressible hatred.                                             
  "Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been         
waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her               
handkerchief and rushed from the room.                                      
  Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre         
was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand.           
Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as      
if in an ague.                                                              
                                                    {BK1|CH24 ^paragraph 30}
  "Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there           
was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in      
it before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I      
am near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all!          
Death is awful..." and he burst into tears.                                 
  Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow,          
quiet steps.                                                                
  "Pierre!" she said.                                                       
  Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his        
forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:          
  "He is no more...."                                                       
                                                    {BK1|CH24 ^paragraph 35}
  Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.                                 
  "Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as      
tears."                                                                     
  She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one         
could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned        
he was fast asleep with his head on his arm.                                
  In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:                           
  "Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.      
But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in            
command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I          
know you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but      
it imposes duties on you, and you must be a man."                           
                                                    {BK1|CH24 ^paragraph 40}
  Pierre was silent.                                                        
  "Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not          
been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle        
promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But          
he had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your             
father's wish?"                                                             
  Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in        
silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna      
Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the      
morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details          
of Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would         
herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but                 
edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it was so          
touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not          
know which had behaved better during those awful moments- the father        
who so remembered everything and everybody at last and last and had         
spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been          
pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to      
hide it in order not to sadden his dying father. "It is painful, but        
it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count      
and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of the eldest                
princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers        
and as a great secret.                                                      
                                                                            
BK1|CH25                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXV                                                               
-                                                                           
  At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the         
arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but         
this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the           
old prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich         
(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor        
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously      
with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle           
Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the             
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that         
anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from              
Moscow to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He        
used to say that there are only two sources of human vice- idleness         
and superstition, and only two virtues- activity and intelligence.          
He himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these         
two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry        
till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time           
was occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs,          
solving problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe,      
working in the garden, or superintending the building that was              
always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition           
facilitating activity, regularity in his household was carried to           
the highest point of exactitude. He always came to table under              
precisely the same conditions, and not only at the same hour but at         
the same minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his serfs,      
the prince was sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being         
a hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted      
men would have aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no        
influence in political affairs, every high official appointed to the        
province in which the prince's estate lay considered it his duty to         
visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber ante chamber just as the      
architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared         
punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber      
experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when the              
enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather         
small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray      
eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his             
shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.                                         
  On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive,           
Princess Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed        
for the morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and             
repeating a silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and         
every morning prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.          
  An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose        
quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in."                            
  Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess            
timidly opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused      
at the entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after              
glancing round continued his work.                                          
  The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The      
large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted            
bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while           
standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with         
tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around- all                 
indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of           
the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and           
the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince           
still possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age.         
After a few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot from the            
pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to        
the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never      
gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly             
cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively,        
said severely:                                                              
                                                     {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.              
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 10}
  "From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his        
still sound, yellowish teeth.                                               
  "Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and      
a timid smile.                                                              
  "I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said           
the prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the      
third!"                                                                     
  "Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still        
more and holding out the letter.                                            
  "The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing         
the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward         
him the exercise book containing geometrical figures.                       
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                           
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 20}
  "This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary,      
having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's               
lesson, was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam!         
I don't want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and          
you'll like it," and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the            
nonsense out of your head."                                                 
  She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an           
uncut book from the high desk.                                              
  "Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has          
sent you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I            
have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go."                              
  He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.      
  Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared                  
expression that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly            
face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing table, on which stood         
miniature portraits and which was littered with books and papers.           
The princess was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the         
geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from         
her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina           
who had been at the Rostovs' name-day party.                                
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 25}
  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:           
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 30}
-                                                                           
  All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is            
already abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on           
their march to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg           
and it is thought intends to expose his precious person to the chances      
of war. God grant that the Corsican monster who is destroying the           
peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the      
Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing          
of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one of the associations         
nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas Rostov, who with his                
enthusiasm could not bear to remain inactive and has left the               
university to join the army. I will confess to you, dear Mary, that in      
spite of his extreme youth his departure for the army was a great           
grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you last summer, is so      
noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which one seldom finds      
nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly, he is so frank      
and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my relations with      
him, transient as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to      
my poor heart, which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell      
you about our parting and all that was said then. That is still too         
fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know these poignant            
joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are generally           
the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too young ever        
to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic      
and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this!           
The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of old         
Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses            
have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur        
Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been              
recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and              
possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince        
Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and that he             
returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.                                   
  I confess I understand very little about all these matters of             
wills and inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom        
we all used to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count              
Bezukhov and the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I          
am much amused to watch the change in the tone and manners of the           
mammas burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies          
themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always seemed        
to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two years people have          
amused themselves by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't          
even know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as         
the future Countess Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have          
no desire for the post. A propos of marriages: do you know that a           
while ago that universal auntie Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the         
seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is neither        
more nor less than with Prince Vasili's son Anatole, whom they wish to      
reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguee, and it is on         
you that his relations' choice has fallen. I don't know what you            
will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it.          
He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is           
all I have been able to find out about him.                                 
  But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper,        
and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the        
mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here.            
Though there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to        
grasp, it is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul.           
Adieu! Give my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments          
to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.                     
                                                   JULIE                    
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 35}
  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.                                                              
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 40}
  The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and      
my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last           
representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own         
turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as            
late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!            
  I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He          
always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the             
quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part          
played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear               
friend, our divine Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to        
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the             
Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still        
more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened with such riches- to          
what temptations he will be exposed! If I were asked what I desire          
most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the poorest beggar. A          
thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume you have sent me and           
which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that among          
some good things it contains others which our weak human understanding      
cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading        
what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never             
could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their          
minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts         
and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration           
quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the              
Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they      
contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the            
terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this             
flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let      
us rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which           
our divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to      
conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less      
we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God,         
who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we      
seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner      
will He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.           
  My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me          
that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince          
Vasili. In regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you,      
dear sweet friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution          
to which we must conform. However painful it may be to me, should           
the Almighty lay the duties of wife and wife and mother upon me I           
shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without                   
disquieting myself by examining my feelings toward him whom He may          
give me for husband.                                                        
  I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy             
arrival at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief      
one, however, for he will leave, us again to take part in this unhappy      
war into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only           
where you are- at the heart of affairs and of the world- is the talk        
all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature- which          
townsfolk consider characteristic of the country- rumors of war are         
heard and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and        
countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day           
before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I                 
witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts            
enrolled from our people and starting to join the army. You should          
have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who      
were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though               
mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached          
love and forgiveness of injuries- and that men attribute the                
greatest merit to skill in killing one another.                             
  Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most          
Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!                   
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 45}
                                                      MARY                  
-                                                                           
  "Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already               
dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling        
Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and            
with guttural r's. She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous,              
mournful, and gloomy world a quite different atmosphere, careless,          
lighthearted, and self-satisfied.                                           
  "Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and            
evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with             
exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael             
Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."            
  "Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to      
warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge        
him and would not have others do so."                                       
                                                    {BK1|CH25 ^paragraph 50}
  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.                                                             
                                                                            
BK1|CH26                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXVI                                                              
-                                                                           
  The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the               
snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side        
of the house through the closed doors came the sound of difficult           
passages- twenty times repeated- of a sonata by Dussek.                     
  Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to           
the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little         
wife to alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old             
Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head out of the door of the                  
antechamber, reported in a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and        
hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival         
nor any other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed        
order of the day. Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well as             
Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether his father's      
habits had changed since he was at home last, and, having assured           
himself that they had not, he turned to his wife.                           
  "He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room,"      
he said.                                                                    
  The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes      
and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak            
just as merrily and prettily as ever.                                       
  "Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around          
with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball.      
"Let's come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at          
Tikhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.            
                                                     {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 5}
  "Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by                
surprise."                                                                  
  Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.           
  "You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who      
kissed his hand.                                                            
  Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord      
came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,          
rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.                          
  "Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let      
her know."                                                                  
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.             
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 15}
  "And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I           
did not see you."                                                           
  Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another,           
and he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess            
Mary had turned toward her brother, and through her tears the               
loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful        
at that moment, rested on Prince Andrew's face.                             
  The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip        
continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary         
and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of        
glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they           
had had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in        
her condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had        
left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would      
have to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that          
Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor         
for Mary, a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess      
Mary was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful            
eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was               
following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law's words.      
In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she               
addressed her brother:                                                      
  "So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing.           
  Lise sighed too.                                                          
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 20}
  "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..."                            
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 25}
  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.           
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 30}
  When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the         
old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his           
father. The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor        
of his son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments         
while he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in               
old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and         
when Prince Andrew entered his father's dressing room (not with the         
contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the         
animated face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting      
on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle,            
entrusting his head to Tikhon.                                              
  "Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old      
man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was        
holding fast to plait, would allow.                                         
  "You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like        
this he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he        
held out his cheek.                                                         
  The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He         
used to say that a nap "after dinner was silver- before dinner,             
golden.") He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his         
thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father          
on the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's              
favorite topic- making fun of the military men of the day, and more         
particularly of Bonaparte.                                                  
  "Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my wife who is          
pregnant," said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his              
father's face with an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?"      
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 35}
  "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!"                                                                      
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 40}
  "Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to           
see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand.            
"The house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there        
and show her over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's           
their woman's way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About          
Mikhelson's army I understand- Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous              
expedition.... But what's the southern army to do? Prussia is               
neutral... I know that. What about Austria?" said he, rising from           
his chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Tikhon, who           
ran after him, handing him different articles of clothing. "What of         
Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"                                     
  Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began- at first           
reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from           
habit changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on-          
to explain the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained      
how an army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as          
to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part      
of that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two          
hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand              
Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty              
thousand Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and           
how a total force of five hundred thousand men was to attack the            
French from different sides. The old prince did not evince the least        
interest during this explanation, but as if he were not listening to        
it continued to dress while walking about, and three times                  
unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The white        
one, the white one!"                                                        
  This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he               
wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:                                
  "And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head                     
reproachfully said: "That's bad! Go on, go on."                             
  The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his          
description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old         
age: "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra."*            
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 45}
-                                                                           
  *"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."                                                   
                                                    {BK1|CH26 ^paragraph 50}
  "Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated,             
meditatively and rapidly:                                                   
  "Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room."                       
                                                                            
BK1|CH27                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXVII                                                             
-                                                                           
  At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the        
dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle      
Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who        
by a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though         
the position of that insignificant individual was such as could             
certainly not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who         
generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely              
admitted even important government officials to his table, had              
unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner      
to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory      
that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on his            
daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or           
I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael              
Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.                                   
  In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was             
exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen- one        
behind each chair- stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head          
butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making        
signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the          
door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at         
a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of         
the Princes Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a        
badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist                 
belonging to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown- an alleged         
descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew,          
looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a      
man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original        
as to be amusing.                                                           
  "How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had      
come up to him.                                                             
  Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not              
understand what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired      
her with reverence and was beyond question.                                 
  "Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew.               
"Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!"                
                                                     {BK1|CH27 ^paragraph 5}
  Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's          
criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were          
heard coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily      
as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of           
his manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the      
great clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from        
the drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes        
from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and      
rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar      
enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired        
in all around him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly        
on the back of her neck.                                                    
  "I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into           
her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit             
down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"                                
  He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman         
moved the chair for her.                                                    
  "Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded               
figure. "You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"                               
  He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips          
only and not with his eyes.                                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH27 ^paragraph 10}
  "You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he        
said.                                                                       
  The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She      
was silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father,      
and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual                      
acquaintances, and she became still more animated and chattered away        
giving him greetings from various people and retailing the town             
gossip.                                                                     
  "Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has         
cried her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively.                
  As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more             
sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had        
formed a definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael         
Ivanovich.                                                                  
  "Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of      
it. Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling      
me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I             
never thought much of him."                                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH27 ^paragraph 15}
  Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such      
things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a           
peg on which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked                 
inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow.               
  "He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to        
the architect.                                                              
  And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and           
the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced      
not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know      
the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an                  
insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no         
longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also        
convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no        
real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day        
were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily          
bore with his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and         
listened to him with evident pleasure.                                      
  "The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov               
himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not          
know how to escape?"                                                        
  "Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked      
away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider,         
Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would        
have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the         
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled         
the devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those            
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what           
chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and        
your generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call          
in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The           
German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the          
Frenchman, Moreau," he said, alluding to the invitation made that year      
to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the          
Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows        
have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you,         
but we'll see what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great               
commander among them! Hm!..."                                               
                                                    {BK1|CH27 ^paragraph 20}
  "I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince             
Andrew, "I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may          
laugh as much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great            
generall"                                                                   
  "Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy      
with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you        
Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says same thing."                
  "To be sure, your excellency." replied the architect.                     
  The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.                                
  "Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got         
splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only          
idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began               
everybody has beaten the Germans. They beat no one- except one              
another. He made his reputation fighting them."                             
                                                    {BK1|CH27 ^paragraph 25}
  And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to      
him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His son      
made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were          
presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion.        
He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how        
this old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could          
know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European            
military and political events.                                              
  "You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state          
of affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't             
sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours           
shown his skill?" he concluded.                                             
  "That would take too long to tell," answered the son.                     
  "Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's         
another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he                 
exclaimed in excellent French.                                              
  "You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!"                               
                                                    {BK1|CH27 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                              
                                                                            
BK1|CH28                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXVIII                                                            
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not              
altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little             
princess was in her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling      
coat without epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms        
assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing           
the trunks put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those        
things he always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a         
large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a           
saber- a present from his father who had brought it from the siege          
of Ochakov. All these traveling effects of Prince Andrew's were in          
very good order: new, clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with        
tapes.                                                                      
  When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men            
capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At          
such moments one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince          
Andrew's face looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind      
him he paced briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking             
straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear          
going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?- perhaps both,         
but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing          
footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped          
at a table as if tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his          
usual tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread          
of Princess Mary that he heard.                                             
  "I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she        
had apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another            
talk with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You         
are not angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha,"           
she added, as if to explain such a question.                                
  She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously      
strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be              
Andrusha- the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in        
childhood.                                                                  
  "And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a           
smile.                                                                      
                                                     {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 5}
  "She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room.      
Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting          
down on the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a         
dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her."                            
  Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical           
and contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.                       
  "One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from             
them, Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated          
in society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter      
into everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.*          
Think it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,      
to be parted from her husband and be left alone the country, in her         
condition! It's very hard."                                                 
-                                                                           
  *To understand all is to forgive all.                                     
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  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.                                                                     
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 15}
  "No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be           
pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her,        
and she's even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am        
even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She        
and Michael Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle        
and kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne          
says: 'We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as      
for the good we have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless      
after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father        
likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads        
splendidly."                                                                
  "To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes           
makes things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked               
suddenly.                                                                   
  Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.       
  "For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she.                          
  "He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting          
very trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their      
father in order to puzzle or test his sister.                               
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 20}
  "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."                                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 25}
  "What is it, dear?"                                                       
  "No- promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble        
and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,            
Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet        
taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were         
the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request         
was granted.                                                                
  She looked timidly at her brother.                                        
  "Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew,      
as if guessing what it was about.                                           
  "Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as         
you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our        
grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out          
what she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?"                    
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.            
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 35}
  "Please, Andrew, for my sake!..."                                         
  Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes         
lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her        
brother would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew              
understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of        
tenderness, for he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.      
  "Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down         
again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.                            
  "As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you              
always used to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so         
sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one."           
  "I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or            
blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?"                                 
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 40}
  Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as        
if she felt guilty.                                                         
  "I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to.         
And I am sorry for that," he went on.                                       
  The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried      
to say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the          
little princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her          
forebodings about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had          
complained of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After           
crying she had fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.      
  "Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and             
never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach           
myself with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in        
whatever circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the         
truth... if you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No!      
But why this is so I don't know..."                                         
  As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed        
her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and           
unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over      
her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.                           
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 45}
  "Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or- go and wake and I'll come      
in a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take           
these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right."                    
  Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:          
"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him        
to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have            
been answered."                                                             
  "Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come                 
immediately."                                                               
  On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected           
one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne           
smiling sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic      
and artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.                    
  "Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason          
blushing and dropping her eyes.                                             
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 50}
  Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger            
suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at           
her forehead and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt      
that the Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he          
reached his sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry          
voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door.         
She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long                   
self-restraint she wished to make up for lost time.                         
  "No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her        
mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old               
age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!"                                                  
  This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh              
Prince Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of            
others some five times. He entered the room softly. The little              
princess, plump and rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work        
in her hands, talking incessantly, repeating Petersburg                     
reminiscences and even phrases. Prince Andrew came up, stroked her          
hair, and asked if she felt rested after their journey. She answered        
him and continued her chatter.                                              
  The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn      
night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.           
Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense        
house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The      
domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to         
the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in         
the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne,              
Princess Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been              
called to his father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to         
him alone. All were waiting for them to come out.                           
  When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age           
spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but         
his son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.                        
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 55}
  "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.                                                                      
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 60}
  "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."                 
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 65}
  "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.               
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 70}
  "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.           
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 75}
  Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his         
father understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his        
son.                                                                        
  "Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done         
shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich.* I          
have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not        
keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember           
and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all           
right- serve him. Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone      
if he is in disfavor. Now come here."                                       
-                                                                           
  *Kutuzov.                                                                 
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 80}
  He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his        
son was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised        
the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled            
with his bold, tall, close handwriting.                                     
  "I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;      
hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond         
and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of           
Suvorov's wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you      
to read when I am gone. You will find them useful."                         
  Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long         
time yet. He felt that he must not say it.                                  
  "I will do it all, Father," he said.                                      
  "Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced      
him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt           
me, your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a               
querulous voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not         
behaved like a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!"              
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 85}
  "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.                                                      
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 90}
  "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."                                          
                                                    {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 95}
  "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.                          
                                                   {BK1|CH28 ^paragraph 100}
  "Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the             
unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed      
the door.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK2                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                 BOOK TWO: 1805                             
                                                                            
BK2|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and           
towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly          
arriving from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and         
burdening the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the      
headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.                            
  On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just          
reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be         
inspected by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance      
of the locality and surroundings- fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled        
roofs, and hills in the distance- and despite the fact that the             
inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not             
Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment      
preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.                
  On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received         
that the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march.        
Though the words of the order were not clear to the regimental              
commander, and the question arose whether the troops were to be in          
marching order or not, it was decided at a consultation between the         
battalion commanders to present the regiment in parade order, on the        
principle that it is always better to "bow too low than not bow low         
enough." So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending      
and cleaning all night long without closing their eyes, while the           
adjutants and company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by            
morning the regiment- instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it        
had been on its last march the day before- presented a well-ordered         
array of two thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty,         
had every button and every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness.      
And not only externally was all in order, but had it pleased the            
commander in chief to look under the uniforms he would have found on        
every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of      
articles, "awl, soap, and all," as the soldiers say. There was only         
one circumstance concerning which no one could be at ease. It was           
the state of the soldiers' boots. More than half the men's boots            
were in holes. But this defect was not due to any fault of the              
regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not        
been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the regiment had marched      
some seven hundred miles.                                                   
  The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and        
thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider            
from chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new         
uniform showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold         
epaulettes which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive        
shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing one of the            
most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in front of the line        
and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was      
plain that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and          
that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to            
indicate that, besides military matters, social interests and the fair      
sex occupied no small part of his thoughts.                                 
  "Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the              
battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain            
that they both felt happy). "We had our hands full last night.              
However, I think the regiment is not a bad one, eh?"                        
                                                      {BK2|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.           
  "It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow."      
  "What?" asked the commander.                                              
  At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had          
been posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an                   
aide-decamp followed by a Cossack.                                          
  The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been         
clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief          
wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on        
the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation      
whatever.                                                                   
                                                     {BK2|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the         
day before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army      
of the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering            
this junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of         
his view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the      
troops arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the        
regiment; so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the      
commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know           
these circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that      
the men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and            
that the commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On             
hearing this the regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged      
his shoulders, and spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.             
  "A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked.                              
  "There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was            
said 'on the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully          
to the battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping                
resolutely forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice             
accustomed to command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?"      
he asked the aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently            
relating to the personage he was referring to.                              
  "In an hour's time, I should say."                                        
  "Shall we have time to change clothes?"                                   
                                                     {BK2|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                                    
                                                     {BK2|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  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..."                                                      
                                                     {BK2|CH1 ^paragraph 25}
  "Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your        
excellency?... nobody knows."                                               
  "Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to      
the ranks," said the captain softly.                                        
  "Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier?      
If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the           
others."                                                                    
  "Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march."             
  "Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the         
regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says      
a word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I        
beg you to dress your men decently."                                        
                                                     {BK2|CH1 ^paragraph 30}
  And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his          
jerky steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display      
of anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further            
excuse for wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished            
badge, at another because his line was not straight, he reached the         
third company.                                                              
  "H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted           
the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there            
were still five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray           
uniform.                                                                    
  Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with         
his clear, insolent eyes in the general's face.                             
  "Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his               
coat... the ras..." he did not finish.                                      
  "General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..."            
Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted.                                             
                                                     {BK2|CH1 ^paragraph 35}
  "No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!"                     
  "Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing        
tones.                                                                      
  The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became           
silent, angrily pulling down his tight scarf.                               
  "I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as      
he turned away.                                                             
                                                                            
BK2|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  "He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment.                       
  The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the          
stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle,             
righted himself, drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute              
countenance, opening his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment        
fluttered like a bird preening its plumage and became motionless.           
  "Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking          
voice which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment,           
and welcome for the approaching chief.                                      
  Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a        
high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs         
and drawn by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped        
the suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian            
general, in a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian           
black ones. The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov           
and the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled      
slightly as treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as      
if those two thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the                
regimental commander did not exist.                                         
  The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as         
with a jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence         
the feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment          
roared, "Health to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all           
became silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment              
moved; then he and the general in white, accompanied by the suite,          
walked between the ranks.                                                   
                                                      {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief      
and devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and        
from the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals,               
bending forward and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and        
from the way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the              
commander in chief, it was evident that he performed his duty as a          
subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as a commander.            
Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its commander the                 
regiment, in comparison with others that had reached Braunau at the         
same time, was in splendid condition. There were only 217 sick and          
stragglers. Everything was in good order except the boots.                  
  Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few         
friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war,                 
sometimes also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several           
times shook his head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian               
general with an expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming      
anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of things it was.      
The regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to      
miss a single word of the commander in chief's regarding the regiment.      
Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken word to      
be heard, followed some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen            
talked among themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the        
commander in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was Prince              
Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer,      
extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes.      
Nesvitski could hardly keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar      
officer who walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and           
without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes,            
watched the regimental commander's back and mimicked his every              
movement. Each time the commander started and bent forward, the hussar      
started and bent forward in exactly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed      
and nudged the others to make them look at the wag.                         
  Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which          
were starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the      
third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected           
this, involuntarily came closer to him.                                     
  "Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had        
been reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.                          
  One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself         
more than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the                  
regimental commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed         
him he drew himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not        
have sustained it had the commander in chief continued to look at him,      
and so Kutuzov, who evidently understood his case and wished him            
nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile         
flitting over his scarred and puffy face.                                   
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  "Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you              
satisfied with him?" he asked the regimental commander.                     
  And the latter- unconscious that he was being reflected in the            
hussar officer as in a looking glass- started, moved forward, and           
answered: "Highly satisfied, your excellency!"                              
  "We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking            
away from him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus."                
  The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this           
and did not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of           
the red-nosed captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his            
expression and pose with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help      
laughing. Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently had complete          
control of his face, and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a        
grimace and then assume a most serious, deferential, and innocent           
expression.                                                                 
  The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently          
trying to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from           
among the suite and said in French:                                         
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  "You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the        
ranks in this regiment."                                                    
  "Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov.                                       
  Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat,        
did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired            
soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks,          
went up to the commander in chief, and presented arms.                      
  "Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.        
  "This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew.                                   
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 20}
  "Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your         
duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you               
deserve well."                                                              
  The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as              
boldly as they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by           
their expression to tear open the veil of convention that separates         
a commander in chief so widely from a private.                              
  "One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm,          
ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault      
and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!"            
  Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had         
turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned         
away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said          
to him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he      
was weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away        
and went to the carriage.                                                   
  The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their                 
appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and      
clothes and to rest after their hard marches.                               
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 25}
  "You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the                  
regimental commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its        
quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front.        
(The regimental commander's face now that the inspection was happily        
over beamed with irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's             
service... it can't be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on            
parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very          
pleased!" And he held out his hand to the captain.                          
  "Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the            
captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where      
two front teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end      
of a gun at Ismail.                                                         
  "And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him- he may be quite           
easy. And tell me, please- I've been meaning to ask- how is to ask-         
how is he behaving himself, and in general..."                              
  "As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your                 
excellency; but his character..." said Timokhin.                            
  "And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander.           
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 30}
  "It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day        
he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a        
wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew."           
  "Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one          
must have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important      
connections... Well, then, you just..."                                     
  "I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile            
that he understood his commander's wish.                                    
  "Well, of course, of course!"                                             
  The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and,            
reining in his horse, said to him:                                          
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 35}
  "After the next affair... epaulettes."                                    
  Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the               
mocking smile on his lips change.                                           
  "Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup      
of vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could          
hear. "I thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company      
and overtook the next one.                                                  
  "Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said          
Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.                                       
  "In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the            
regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).                         
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 40}
  The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected         
the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could      
be heard on every side.                                                     
  "And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?"                             
  "And so he is! Quite blind!"                                              
  "No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands...      
he noticed everything..."                                                   
  "When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..."                  
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 45}
  "And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were          
smeared with chalk- as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as      
they do the guns."                                                          
  "I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You        
were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau."      
  "Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't          
know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are         
putting them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte      
will begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool.      
You'd better listen more carefully!"                                        
  "What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is          
turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat          
cooked before we reach our quarters."                                       
  "Give me a biscuit, you devil!"                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 50}
  "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.                         
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 55}
  And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A          
drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and                 
flourishing his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing      
with the words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and                   
concluding: "On then, brothers, on to glory, led by Father                  
Kamenski." This song had been composed in the Turkish campaign and now      
being sung in Austria, the only change being that the words "Father         
Kamenski" were replaced by "Father Kutuzov."                                
  Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms      
as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer- a lean,                
handsome soldier of forty- looked sternly at the singers and screwed        
up his eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on      
him, he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but         
precious object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds,      
suddenly flung it down and began:                                           
  "Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!"                                          
  "Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet          
player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the          
front and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his                 
shoulders and flourished his castanets as if threatening someone.           
The soldiers, swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously,           
marched with long steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the        
creaking of springs, and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard.             
Kutuzov and his suite were returning to the town. The commander in          
chief made a sign that the men should continue to march at ease, and        
he and all his suite showed pleasure at the sound of the singing and        
the sight of the dancing soldier and the gay and smartly marching men.      
In the second file from the right flank, beside which the carriage          
passed the company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted             
notice. It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace and boldness in      
time to the song and looking at those driving past as if he pitied all      
who were not at that moment marching with the company. The hussar           
cornet of Kutuzov's suite who had mimicked the regimental commander,        
fell back from the carriage and rode up to Dolokhov.                        
  Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to         
the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a          
private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov         
had spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the               
cordiality of an old friend.                                                
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 60}
  "My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making        
his horse keep pace with the company.                                       
  "How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see."                  
  The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy        
gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of         
Dolokhov's reply.                                                           
  "And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov.              
  "All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto         
the staff?"                                                                 
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 65}
  "I was attached; I'm on duty."                                            
  Both were silent.                                                         
  "She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the        
song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness.        
Their conversation would probably have been different but for the           
effect of that song.                                                        
  "Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov.             
  "The devil only knows! They say so."                                      
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 70}
  "I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song            
demanded.                                                                   
  "I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said      
Zherkov.                                                                    
  "Why, have you too much money?"                                           
  "Do come."                                                                
  "I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get      
reinstated."                                                                
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 75}
  "Well, that's only till the first engagement."                            
  "We shall see."                                                           
  They were again silent.                                                   
  "Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the             
staff..."                                                                   
  Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg-         
I'll take it!"                                                              
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 80}
  "Well, never mind; I only..."                                             
  "And I only..."                                                           
  "Good-by."                                                                
  "Good health..."                                                          
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH2 ^paragraph 85}
          "It's a long, long way.                                           
          To my native land..."                                             
-                                                                           
  Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly            
from foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down,         
galloped past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping         
time to the song.                                                           
                                                                            
BK2|CH3                                                                     
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into      
his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers           
relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the           
letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in               
command of the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the         
room with the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of           
the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread      
out.                                                                        
  "Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this                 
exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with         
the conversation in French.                                                 
  "All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of             
expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each                
deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened      
with pleasure to his own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if         
the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the      
Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should long           
ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me        
personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command          
of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful           
general- of whom Austria has so many- and to lay down all this heavy        
responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us,          
General."                                                                   
  And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at         
liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not,      
but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole            
point."                                                                     
  The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to        
reply in the same tone.                                                     
                                                      {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  "On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that            
contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your                
excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by         
His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the                
splendid Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have        
been accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently        
prearranged sentence.                                                       
  Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.                                        
  "But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with           
which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine         
that the Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a              
leader as General Mack, have by now already gained a decisive               
victory and no longer need our aid," said Kutuzov.                          
  The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an              
Austrian defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the               
unfavorable rumors that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an      
Austrian victory sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on               
blandly smiling with the same expression, which seemed to say that          
he had a right to suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter he had          
received from Mack's army informed him of a victory and stated              
strategically the position of the army was very favorable.                  
  "Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew.             
"Please have a look at it"- and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about        
the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following         
passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter:                   
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men          
with which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech.         
Also, as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage      
of commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not        
cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line        
of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his          
intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful      
ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the              
Imperial Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in            
conjunction with it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the         
fate he deserves.                                                           
-                                                                           
  Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at           
the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.                     
  "But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect      
the worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have            
done with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round      
at the aide-de-camp.                                                        
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  "Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince         
Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports      
from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is        
one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he        
said, handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French         
out of all this, showing all the news we have had of the movements          
of the Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency."                  
  Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from           
the first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have      
liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both,        
stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.          
  Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia,      
he had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his         
face, in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of           
his former affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man         
who has time to think of the impression he makes on others, but is          
occupied with agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed            
more satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile and          
glance were brighter and more attractive.                                   
  Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very           
kindly, promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the             
other adjutants, and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more         
serious commissions. From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade,          
Prince Andrew's father.                                                     
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his              
industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to          
have such a subordinate by me.                                              
-                                                                           
  On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army             
generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two      
quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be        
different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great            
things of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with         
them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority,          
disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But      
among these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that         
they respected and even feared him.                                         
  Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers        
in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp          
on duty, Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book.              
  "Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski.                                          
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 25}
  "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."                                                                     
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 30}
  "If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come."          
  "Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.              
  But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the      
order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,      
who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.         
Prince Andrew stopped short.                                                
  "Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general              
speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and      
advancing straight toward the inner door.                                   
  "The commander in chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly      
up to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom           
shall I announce?"                                                          
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 35}
  The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was        
rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.              
  "The commander in chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly.           
  The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He            
took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out      
the leaf, gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and          
threw himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if               
asking, "Why do they look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched        
his neck as if he intended to say something, but immediately, with          
affected indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer           
sound which immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened      
and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged          
head bent forward as though running away from some danger, and, making      
long, quick strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.                 
  "Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice.            
  Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly         
immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a          
wave and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head                
respectfully, closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before      
him, and closed the door himself behind him.                                
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 40}
  The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been          
beaten and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be          
correct. Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various             
directions with orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had        
hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.             
  Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief            
interest lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack           
and heard the details of his disaster he understood that half the           
campaign was lost, understood all the difficulties of the Russian           
army's position, and vividly imagined what awaited it and the part          
he would have to play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the      
thought of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's         
time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian              
encounter with the French since Suvorov met them. He feared that            
Bonaparte's genius might outweigh all the courage of the Russian            
troops, and at the same time could not admit the idea of his hero           
being disgraced.                                                            
  Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward         
his room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the         
corridor he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag          
Zherkov; they were as usual laughing.                                       
  "Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale      
face and glittering eyes.                                                   
  "There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski.                    
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 45}
  Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward        
them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian               
general who on Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the         
Russian army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived           
the previous evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor for        
the generals to pass the three officers quite easily, but Zherkov,          
pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm, said in a breathless voice,           
  "They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please      
make way!"                                                                  
  The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid          
embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly      
appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.         
  "Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and                
addressing the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate          
you."                                                                       
  He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with           
the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.                     
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 50}
  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.        
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 55}
  *"Good God, what simplicity!"                                             
-                                                                           
  Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but            
Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and      
turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of      
Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the        
Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest.                
  "If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said              
sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent         
your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in          
my presence, I will teach you to behave yourself."                          
  Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they        
gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.                            
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 60}
  "What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov.             
  "I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski,           
and taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to        
say.                                                                        
  "Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to           
soothe him.                                                                 
  "What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his        
excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers               
serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and            
grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely           
lackeys who care nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille        
hommes massacres et l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la      
le mot pour rire,"* he said, as if strengthening his views by this          
French sentence. "C' est bien pour un garcon de rein comme cet              
individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour           
vous.*[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 Zherkov could still hear him.                           
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH3 ^paragraph 65}
  *"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.                                        
                                                                            
BK2|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The          
squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in        
the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were      
assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known          
throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet               
Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had             
lived with the squadron commander.                                          
  On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the        
news of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this                
squadron was proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at           
cards all night, had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early          
in the morning from a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet              
uniform, with a jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg      
over the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a moment in      
the stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang         
down and called to his orderly.                                             
  "Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up        
headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he           
continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted             
young people show to everyone when they are happy.                          
  "Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his         
head.                                                                       
  "Mind, walk him up and down well!"                                        
                                                      {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had           
already thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's             
head. It was evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that      
it paid to serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his           
flank, and lingered for a moment.                                           
  "Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and         
holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the        
porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork        
in hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his         
face immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon      
gut Morgen!"* he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to      
greet the young man.                                                        
-                                                                           
  *"A very good morning! A very good morning!"                              
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  "Schon fleissig?"* said Rostov 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!"                                                     
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  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!"                                        
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and ctied             
laughing, "Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German             
cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging         
for hay had any reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with        
joyful delight and brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of           
their mutual affection, and parted smiling, the German returning to         
his cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage he occupied with Denisov.       
  "What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly,          
whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.                                     
  "Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing,"                
answered Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early          
to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's            
lost and will come back in a rage. Will you have coffee?"                   
  "Yes, bring some."                                                        
  Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!"            
said he. "Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw         
Denisov coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face,               
sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore          
an unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a           
crumpled shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch             
gloomily, hanging his head.                                                 
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  "Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!"      
  "Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice.                    
  "Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room.                 
  "Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and        
have seen Fraulein Mathilde."                                               
  "Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a           
damned fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill             
luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on.             
Hullo there! Tea!"                                                          
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong        
teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his          
thick tangled black hair.                                                   
  "And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed            
"the rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both           
hands. "Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd."      
  He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in           
his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while          
he continued to shout.                                                      
  "He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles        
it; gives the singles and snatches the doubles!"                            
  He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it          
away. Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked           
cheerfully with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov.                       
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 35}
  "If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one          
to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's        
there?" he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy           
boots and the clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a                  
respectful cough.                                                           
  "The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka.                             
  Denisov's face puckered still more.                                       
  "Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in           
it. "Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove         
the purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the                   
quartermaster.                                                              
  Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new         
coins in separate piles, began counting them.                               
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 40}
  "Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came             
Denisov's voice from the next room.                                         
  "Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping          
voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same                 
squadron, entered the room.                                                 
  Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little        
hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been               
transferred from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very      
well in the regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him      
and was unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to           
the man.                                                                    
  "Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook        
was a young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)                             
  The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in        
the face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.         
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 45}
  "I saw you riding this morning..." he added.                              
  "Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the           
horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half        
that sum. "He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he          
added.                                                                      
  "The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and        
show you what kind of rivet to use."                                        
  "Yes, please do," said Rostov.                                            
  "I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse        
you'll thank me for."                                                       
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 50}
  "Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid           
Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.                                
  In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the                 
threshold facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing      
Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder          
with his thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned           
and gave a shudder of disgust.                                              
  "Ugh! I don't like that fellow"' he said, regardless of the               
quartermaster's presence.                                                   
  Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but           
what's one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to              
Telyanin.                                                                   
  Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had        
left him, rubbing his small white hands.                                    
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 55}
  "Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he        
entered.                                                                    
  "Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting          
up and looking carelessly about him.                                        
  "I have."                                                                 
  "Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about              
yesterday's order. Have you got it, Denisov?"                               
  "Not yet. But where are you off to?"                                      
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 60}
  "I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin.      
  They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant           
explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.          
  When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on        
the table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a           
sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am         
witing to her."                                                             
  He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,           
evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to        
write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.                              
  "You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We           
are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God,         
one is pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send         
him to the devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to        
him not in the least abashed.                                               
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 65}
  "Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the                
quartermaster for the money."                                               
  Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.            
  "Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the      
puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov.                                        
  "Seven new and three old imperials."                                      
  "Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you             
sca'cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka.                 
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 70}
  "Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said      
Rostov, blushing.                                                           
  "Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled              
Denisov.                                                                    
  "But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will           
offend me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated.                            
  "No, I tell you."                                                         
  And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.       
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 75}
  "Where have you put it, Wostov?"                                          
  "Under the lower pillow."                                                 
  "It's not there."                                                         
  Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.         
  "That's a miwacle."                                                       
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 80}
  "Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the               
pillows one at a time and shaking them.                                     
  He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.            
  "Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you          
kept it under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it            
just here. Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka.                    
  "I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it."                
  "But it isn't?..."                                                        
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 85}
  "You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget      
it. Feel in your pockets."                                                  
  "No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov,            
"but I remember putting it there."                                          
  Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and           
under the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of      
the room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the      
latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found      
Denisov glanced at Rostov.                                                  
  "Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..."                     
  Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and             
instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested      
somewhere below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not        
draw breath.                                                                
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 90}
  "And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant           
and yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka.                 
  "Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!"               
shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man            
with a threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you,        
I'll flog you all."                                                         
  Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled      
on his saber, and put on his cap.                                           
  "I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his        
orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.                 
  "Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov,           
going toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused,             
thought a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted           
at, seized his arm.                                                         
                                                     {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 95}
  "Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood        
out like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The             
purse is here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found."       
  "I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and      
went to the door.                                                           
  "And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov,               
rushing at the cadet to restrain him.                                       
  But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though          
Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his         
face.                                                                       
  "Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling            
voice. "There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it      
is not so, then..."                                                         
                                                    {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 100}
  He could not finish, and ran out of the room.                             
  "Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words           
Rostov heard.                                                               
  Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters.                                       
  "The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's        
orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the               
cadet's troubled face.                                                      
  "No, nothing."                                                            
                                                    {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 105}
  "You've only just missed him," said the orderly.                          
  The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and         
Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was      
an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to      
it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch.                                   
  In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish      
of sausages and a bottle of wine.                                           
  "Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and               
raising his eyebrows.                                                       
  "Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word;      
and he sat down at the nearest table.                                       
                                                    {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 110}
  Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in         
the room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of        
knives and the munching of the lieutenant.                                  
  When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a          
double purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white,            
turned-up fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his                
eyebrows gave it to the waiter.                                             
  "Please be quick," he said.                                               
  The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.              
  "Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost                
inaudible, voice.                                                           
                                                    {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 115}
  With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him         
the purse.                                                                  
  "Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly             
pale, and added, "Look at it, young man."                                   
  Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in           
it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his         
usual way and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.                           
  "If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these                
wretched little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well,         
let me have it, young man, I'm going."                                      
  Rostov did not speak.                                                     
                                                    {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 120}
  "And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite            
decently here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it."             
  He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go        
of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into        
the pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his         
mouth slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in      
my pocket and that's quite simple and is no else's business."               
  "Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted         
brows he glanced into Rostov's eyes.                                        
  Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to           
Rostov's and back, and back again and again in an instant.                  
  "Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost      
dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took              
it..." he whispered just above Telyanin's ear.                              
                                                    {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 125}
  "What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin.                          
  But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an                
entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of      
doubt fell from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to          
pity the miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun      
had to be completed.                                                        
  "Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered            
Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room.           
"We must have an explanation..."                                            
  "I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov.                              
  "I..."                                                                    
                                                    {BK2|CH4 ^paragraph 130}
  Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his      
eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not           
rising to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible.                         
  "Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,      
take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and             
mother!..."                                                                 
  Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the      
room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced           
his steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you          
do it?"                                                                     
  "Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.                           
  "Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take        
the money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.           
                                                                            
BK2|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  That same evening there was an animated discussion among the              
squadron's officers in Denisov's quarters.                                  
  "And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!"         
said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and      
many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with         
excitement.                                                                 
  The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks           
for affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.                 
  "I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I      
lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on         
duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me        
apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it          
beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..."                       
  "You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted         
the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache.      
"You tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an             
officer has stolen..."                                                      
                                                      {BK2|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  "I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of          
other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but         
I am not a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that      
here one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying- so        
let him give me satisfaction..."                                            
  "That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the         
point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet        
to demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?"                        
  Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the             
conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered        
the staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head.           
  "You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other          
officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel        
was called Bogdanich) "shuts you up."                                       
  "He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth."                
                                                     {BK2|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and            
must apologize."                                                            
  "Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov.                                   
  "I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and      
severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him      
but to the whole regiment- all of us- you're to blame all round. The        
case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken           
advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the             
officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and        
disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of         
one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like             
that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what           
was not true. It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear             
fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth        
the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish        
to make the whole affair public. You are offended at being put on duty      
a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever      
Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel!          
You're quick at taking offense, but you don't mind disgracing the           
whole regiment!" The staff captain's voice began to tremble. "You have      
been in the regiment next to no time, my lad, you're here today and         
tomorrow you'll be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your           
fingers when it is said 'There are thieves among the Pavlograd              
officers!' But it's not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denisov?        
It's not the same!"                                                         
  Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked         
with his glittering black eyes at Rostov.                                   
  "You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued         
the staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and,           
God willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of        
the regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old               
fellow! And all this is not right, it's not right! You may take             
offense or not but I always stick to mother truth. It's not right!"         
                                                     {BK2|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.                   
  "That's twue, devil take it" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then,      
Wostov, now then!"                                                          
   Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one            
officer and then at the other.                                              
  "No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand.            
You're wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of         
the regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me           
the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame,          
to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?..."                        
  "Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning             
round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand.                
                                                     {BK2|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  "I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow."                      
  "That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address      
Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and        
apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!"                                       
  "Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,"          
said Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I         
can't, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little           
boy asking forgiveness?"                                                    
  Denisov began to laugh.                                                   
  "It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay           
for your obstinacy," said Kirsten.                                          
                                                     {BK2|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  "No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling.         
I can't..."                                                                 
  "Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has           
become of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov.                                
  "He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list             
tomowwow," muttered Denisov.                                                
  "It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said           
the staff captain.                                                          
  "Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!"            
shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.                                     
                                                     {BK2|CH5 ^paragraph 30}
  Just then Zherkov entered the room.                                       
  "What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer.       
  "We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his        
whole army."                                                                
  "It's not true!"                                                          
  "I've seen him myself!"                                                   
                                                     {BK2|CH5 ^paragraph 35}
  "What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?"                           
  "Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how      
did you come here?"                                                         
  "I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,        
Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on          
Mack's arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just      
come out of a hot bath."                                                    
  "Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days."      
  The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by         
Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.                        
                                                     {BK2|CH5 ^paragraph 40}
  "We're going into action, gentlemen!"                                     
  "Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!"                      
                                                                            
BK2|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges        
over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October          
23 the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the           
Russian baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were            
defiling through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.              
  It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out      
before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the        
bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain,        
and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects          
could be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down          
below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed             
houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed      
jostling masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels,      
an island, and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the         
confluence of the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky         
left bank of the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic            
background of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a            
convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far away on         
the other side of the Enns the enemy's horse patrols could be               
discerned.                                                                  
  Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in               
command of the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the           
country through his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who         
had been sent to the rearguard by the commander in chief, was               
sitting on the trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied           
him had handed him a knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski was                
treating some officers to pies and real doppelkummel. The officers          
gladly gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting Turkish      
fashion on the wet grass.                                                   
  "Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's         
a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski        
was saying.                                                                 
  "Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased      
to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely         
place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a           
splendid house!"                                                            
                                                      {BK2|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  "Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take         
another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining           
the countryside- "See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look         
there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging          
something. They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident           
approval.                                                                   
  "So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like,"             
added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be      
to slip in over there."                                                     
  He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed      
and gleamed.                                                                
  "That would be fine, gentlemen!"                                          
  The officers laughed.                                                     
                                                     {BK2|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                                                   
                                                     {BK2|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.             
  "Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said.           
  "It's a bad business," said the general without answering him,            
"our men have been wasting time."                                           
  "Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski.            
  "Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order         
that had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that      
they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the         
inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected."                    
                                                     {BK2|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  "Very good," answered Nesvitski.                                          
  He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the            
knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.      
  "I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who            
watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the         
hill.                                                                       
  "Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said      
the general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to         
pass the time."                                                             
  "Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.                              
                                                     {BK2|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  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.                                      
                                                                            
BK2|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge,             
where there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who         
had alighted from his horse and whose big body was body was jammed          
against the railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood      
a few steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each            
time Prince Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed           
him back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he             
could do was to smile.                                                      
  "What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy        
soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were        
crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow!        
You can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"          
  But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted        
at the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to         
the left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder          
to shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a        
dense mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the            
rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying           
round the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on           
the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder        
straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and,             
under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and           
listless tired expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud      
that covered the planks of the bridge. Sometimes through the                
monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of         
the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different          
from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of      
wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a             
townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and sometimes like      
a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's baggage            
wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides,             
moved across the bridge.                                                    
  "It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are           
there many more of you to come?"                                            
  "A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat,        
with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.                 
                                                      {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                                        
                                                     {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud         
laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who        
had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.            
  "Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll        
all be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.            
  "As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young               
soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I         
felt like dying of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that                  
frightened!" said he, as if bragging of having been frightened.             
  That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had            
gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a            
German, and seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine          
brindled cow with a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A          
woman with an unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl        
with bright red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently         
these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes        
of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was      
passing at foot pace all the soldiers' remarks related to the two           
young ones. Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly      
thoughts about the women.                                                   
  "Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"                     
                                                     {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German,        
who, angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast         
eyes.                                                                       
  "See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"                       
  "There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!"                        
  "I have seen as much before now, mate!"                                   
  "Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an        
apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.                 
                                                     {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.        
  "Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple.        
  The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on        
the bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed.        
When they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with           
the same kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens,           
the horses of a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the               
bridge, and the whole crowd had to wait.                                    
  "And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the            
soldiers. "Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait?        
It'll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed        
in too"- different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men              
looked at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the             
bridge.                                                                     
  Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski        
suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...      
something big, that splashed into the water.                                
                                                     {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  "Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly,           
looking round at the sound.                                                 
  "Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily.             
  The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon         
ball.                                                                       
  "Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of      
the way! Make way!"                                                         
  With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting        
continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make           
way for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and      
those nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed        
still harder from behind.                                                   
                                                     {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 30}
  "Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from            
behind him.                                                                 
  Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but               
separated by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red         
and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak          
hanging jauntily over his shoulder.                                         
  "Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov        
evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot        
whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a           
small bare hand as red as his face.                                         
  "Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?"            
  "The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his             
white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which        
twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting         
white foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his         
hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider         
let him. "What is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of         
the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart!            
I'll hack you with my saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber        
from its scabbard and flourishing it                                        
                                                     {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 35}
  The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and        
Denisov joined Nesvitski.                                                   
  "How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had      
ridden up to him.                                                           
  "They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov.         
"They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to        
fight, let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."                      
  "What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's        
new cloak and saddlecloth.                                                  
  Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that            
diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.                
                                                     {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 40}
  "Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth,         
and scented myself."                                                        
  The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the         
determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted               
frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through        
to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the      
bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the            
order, and having done this he rode back.                                   
  Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge.          
Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the         
ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw           
nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,            
resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in        
front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to           
emerge on his side of it.                                                   
  The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the          
trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,            
estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually      
encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past            
them in regular order.                                                      
  "Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one.                              
                                                     {BK2|CH7 ^paragraph 45}
  "What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked           
another.                                                                    
  "Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose            
prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.                    
  "I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine      
cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the         
mud off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more            
like a bird than a man."                                                    
  "There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look           
fine," said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent             
under the weight of his knapsack.                                           
  "Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!"           
the hussar shouted back.                                                    
                                                                            
BK2|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing          
together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last      
the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last        
battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars          
remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could      
be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible          
from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which      
the river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile           
away. At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of      
our Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the      
high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These          
were the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at         
a trot. All the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they         
tried to talk of other things and to look in other directions, thought      
only of what was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking          
at the patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the          
enemy's troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun        
was descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around           
it. It was calm, and at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of         
the enemy could be heard from the hill. There was no one now between        
the squadron and the enemy except a few scattered skirmishers. An           
empty space of some seven hundred yards was all that separated them.        
The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible,         
and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the          
more clearly felt.                                                          
  "One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line              
dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and          
death. And what is there? Who is there?- there beyond that field, that      
tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to           
know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner        
or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is           
there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other        
side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and      
are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So        
thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the              
enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness        
of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.               
  On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon             
rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron.      
The officers who had been standing together rode off to their               
places. The hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence          
fell on the whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and      
at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of command. A second           
and a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the        
hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads      
of the horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not         
look round, but at the sound of each shot, as at the word of                
command, the whole squadron with its rows of faces so alike yet so          
different, holding its breath while the ball flew past, rose in the         
stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers without turning their heads      
glanced at one another, curious to see their comrades' impression.          
Every face, from Denisov's to that of the bugler, showed one common         
expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and         
mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if             
threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball          
flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook- a handsome        
horse despite its game leg- had the happy air of a schoolboy called up      
before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he        
will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear,         
bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under      
fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of          
something new and stern showed round the mouth.                             
  "Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight!            
Look at me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept      
turning his horse in front of the squadron.                                 
  The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole         
short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in        
which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually        
did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second               
bottle; he was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown          
back like birds when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into        
the sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling         
backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the              
squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to look to their          
pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed,      
steady mare came at a walk to meet him. His face with its long              
mustache was serious as always, only his eyes were brighter than            
usual.                                                                      
                                                      {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  "Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a            
fight. You'll see- we shall retire."                                        
  "The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,         
Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it          
at last."                                                                   
  And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet.              
Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the        
bridge. Denisov galloped up to him.                                         
  "Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."               
  "Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his      
face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping         
here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the                
squadron back."                                                             
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire             
without having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in      
the front line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted           
the farther side of the river.                                              
  The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up        
the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich                 
Schubert, came up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far      
from Rostov, without taking any notice of him although they were now        
meeting for the first time since their encounter concerning                 
Telyanin. Rostov, feeling that he was at the front and in the power of      
a man toward whom he now admitted that he had been to blame, did not        
lift his eyes from the colonel's athletic back, his nape covered            
with light hair, and his red neck. It seemed to Rostov that                 
Bogdanich was only pretending not to notice him, and that his whole         
aim now was to test the cadet's courage, so he drew himself up and          
looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that Bogdanich rode        
so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that his          
enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish          
him- Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdanich would        
come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the         
hand of reconciliation.                                                     
  The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as      
he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After      
his dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the             
regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front            
when he could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and           
had succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince          
Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order from the           
commander of the rear guard.                                                
  "Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of              
gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an             
order to stop and fire the bridge."                                         
  "An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely.                            
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious           
tone, "but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the          
hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"                          
  Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the        
colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout                 
Nesvitski came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely          
carry his weight.                                                           
  "How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to        
fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are           
all beside themselves over there and one can't make anything out."          
  The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to               
Nesvitski.                                                                  
  "You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said         
nothing about firing it."                                                   
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap      
and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,           
"wasn't I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material         
had been put in position?"                                                  
  "I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell        
me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders        
strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would        
it burn, I could not know by the holy spirit!"                              
  "Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand.      
"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.                        
  "On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"           
  "You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in          
an offended tone.                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  "Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be             
quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."                
  The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the           
stout staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.                        
  "I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce      
that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would           
still do the right thing.                                                   
  Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to           
blame for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second      
squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to      
the bridge.                                                                 
  "There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He              
wishes to test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his        
face. "Let him see whether I am a coward!" he thought.                      
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 30}
  Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression      
appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy,      
the colonel, closely- to find in his face confirmation of his own           
conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and              
looked as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came      
the word of command.                                                        
  "Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him.             
  Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the        
hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The           
men were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the                
colonel, he had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the                
hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His hand                
trembled as he gave his horse into an orderly's charge, and he felt         
the blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him,             
leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the             
hussars running all around him, their spurs catching and their              
sabers clattering.                                                          
  "Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.                                 
  Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,      
trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not          
looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud,                 
stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.                
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 35}
  "At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who,         
having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a        
triumphant, cheerful face.                                                  
  Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy         
and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the           
front the better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing          
Rostov, shouted to him:                                                     
  "Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right!            
Come back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who,           
showing off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:         
  "Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.                   
  "Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning        
in his saddle.                                                              
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 40}
-                                                                           
  Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were           
standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small        
group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,      
and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and            
then at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side-        
the blue uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as            
artillery.                                                                  
  "Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they      
get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within                 
grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each           
man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily         
asked himself with a sinking heart- watching the bridge and the             
hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from      
the other side with their bayonets and guns.                                
  "Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within      
grapeshot range now."                                                       
  "He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the            
suite.                                                                      
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 45}
  "True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have          
done the job just as well."                                                 
  "Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the              
hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know      
whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency!        
How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the        
Vladimir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered,           
the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon.         
Our Bogdanich knows how things are done."                                   
  "There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot."           
  He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being            
detached and hurriedly removed.                                             
  On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke         
appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at           
the moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two      
reports one after another, and a third.                                     
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 50}
  "Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the             
officer of the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,           
fallen!"                                                                    
  "Two, I think."                                                           
  "If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning         
away.                                                                       
  The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue         
uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but      
at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the          
bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening            
there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had             
succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now           
firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns were          
trained and there was someone to fire at.                                   
  The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the          
hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot         
went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of           
hussars and knocked three of them over.                                     
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 55}
  Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on           
the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he      
had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the      
bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like           
the other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard      
a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar          
nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to        
him with the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men          
seized the hussar and began lifting him.                                    
  "Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but        
still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.                              
  Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something,           
gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky,           
and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm,           
and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what        
soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer             
still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery,        
the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of           
their summits... There was peace and happiness... "I should wishing         
for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there," thought Rostov.           
"In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness;           
but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry...      
There- they are shouting again, and again are all running back              
somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above          
me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see the            
sun, this water, that gorge!..."                                            
  At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other        
stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and          
of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into         
one feeling of sickening agitation.                                         
  "O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect      
me!" Rostov whispered.                                                      
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 60}
  The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their              
voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from           
sight.                                                                      
  "Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just        
above his ear.                                                              
  "It's all over; but I am a coward- yes, a coward!" thought Rostov,        
and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one         
foot, from the orderly and began to mount.                                  
  "Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.                                   
  "Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks      
and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the         
dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting          
at you like a target."                                                      
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 65}
  And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov,              
composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from           
the suite.                                                                  
  "Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this        
was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation      
which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.              
  "Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I             
don't get promoted to a sublieutenancy."                                    
  "Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel             
triumphantly and gaily.                                                     
  "And if he asks about the losses?"                                        
                                                     {BK2|CH8 ^paragraph 70}
  "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.                                                               
                                                                            
BK2|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the            
command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to      
it, losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of            
supplies, and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything      
that had been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men        
commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube,             
stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions        
only as far as necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its         
heavy equipment. There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and          
Melk; but despite the courage and endurance- acknowledged even by           
the enemy- with which the Russians fought, the only consequence of          
these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had        
escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated      
from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and      
exhausted forces. The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought         
of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared          
in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been handed to         
Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the            
sole and almost unattainable aim remaining for him was to effect a          
junction with the forces that were advancing from Russia, without           
losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.                                    
  On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the      
left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with      
the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the           
thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left             
bank, and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were      
taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time,         
after a fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a      
fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the French.              
Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of         
their number in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number      
of sick and wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube      
with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the        
enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems                 
converted into military hospitals could no longer accommodate all           
the sick and wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory over      
Mortier raised the spirits of the army considerably. Throughout the         
whole army and at headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors          
were rife of the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of some         
victory gained by the Austrians, and of the retreat of the                  
frightened Bonaparte.                                                       
  Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the             
Austrian General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse           
had been wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a             
bullet. As a mark of the commander in chief's special favor he was          
sent with the news of this victory to the Austrian court, now no            
longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn.         
Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could endure            
physical fatigue far better than many very muscular men, and on the         
night of the battle, having arrived at Krems excited but not weary,         
with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov, he was sent immediately          
with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a            
reward but an important step toward promotion.                              
  The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow          
that had fallen the previous day- the day of the battle. Reviewing his      
impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself           
the impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the         
send-off given him by the commander in chief and his fellow                 
officers, Prince Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise                
enjoying the feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a          
long-desired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears              
seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation of            
victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were running            
away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly roused himself          
with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that this was not so           
but that on the contrary the French had run away. He again recalled         
all the details of the victory and his own calm courage during the          
battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark starry night        
was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was thawing in the      
sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the road        
were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.                      
  At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.      
The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the           
front cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each      
of the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were         
being jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he             
heard Russian words), others were eating bread; the more severely           
wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children,        
at the envoy hurrying past them.                                            
                                                      {BK2|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                                         
                                                     {BK2|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the             
paved streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings,      
the lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all      
that atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so               
attractive to a soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and      
sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt          
even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day before. Only his      
eyes gleamed feverishly and his thoughts followed one another with          
extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the         
details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the               
concise form concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to      
the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions that          
might be put to him and the answers he would give. He expected to be        
at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the palace,      
however, an official came running out to meet him, and learning that        
he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.                     
  "To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will         
find the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to      
the Minister of War."                                                       
  The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait,           
and went in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and      
bowing with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along      
a corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The        
adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any         
attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.                
  Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he            
approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and           
without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into      
one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind               
instantly suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to        
despise the adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder,      
they probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes        
narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with      
peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened         
when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers        
and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three             
minutes taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each         
side of the minister's bent bald head with its gray temples. He went        
on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of           
the door and the sound of footsteps.                                        
  "Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the      
papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.                 
                                                     {BK2|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army              
interested the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he        
was concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger      
that impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me,"      
he thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together,                
arranged them evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual      
and distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the        
firm, intelligent expression on his face changed in a way evidently         
deliberate and habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial      
smile (which does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man      
who is continually receiving many petitioners one after another.            
  "From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good        
news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high      
time!"                                                                      
  He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it      
with a mournful expression.                                                 
  "Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a            
calamity! What a calamity!"                                                 
  Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and           
looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.                   
                                                     {BK2|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                              
                                                                            
BK2|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance        
of his in the diplomatic service.                                           
  "Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,"            
said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the          
prince's things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was              
ushering Bolkonski in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh?               
Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see."                           
  After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's        
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin        
settled down comfortably beside the fire.                                   
  After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived      
of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life,         
Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious               
surroundings such as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides      
it was pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not      
in Russian (for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who      
would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the              
Austrians which was then particularly strong.                               
  Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle      
as Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in                   
Petersburg, but had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in          
Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave         
promise of rising high in the military profession, so to an even            
greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic             
career. He still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he had      
entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris and            
Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in Vienna. Both the        
foreign minister and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and valued him.      
He was not one of those many diplomats who are esteemed because they        
have certain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak      
French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how to do it,           
and despite his indolence would sometimes spend a whole night at his        
writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his work. It           
was not the question "What for?" but the question "How?" that               
interested him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care,        
but it gave him great pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or        
report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin's services            
were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in           
dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres.                   
                                                     {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be        
made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to        
say something striking and took part in a conversation only when            
that was possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with               
wittily original, finished phrases of general interest. These               
sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a              
portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society            
people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in          
fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing        
rooms and often had an influence on matters considered important.           
  His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which         
always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers         
after a Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the             
principal play of expression on his face. Now his forehead would            
pucker into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows      
would descend and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small,         
deep-set eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.                      
  "Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.                         
  Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself,                 
described the engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.          
  "They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of          
skittles," said he in conclusion.                                           
                                                    {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.                  
  "Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a            
distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute        
estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que          
votre victoire n'est pas des plus victorieuses."*                           
-                                                                           
  *"But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian        
army, I must say that your victory was not particularly victorious."        
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  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."                                                             
                                                    {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  "And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have      
been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile.         
"You ought to have been there at seven in the morning."                     
  "Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic         
methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince              
Andrew in the same tone.                                                    
  "I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to         
take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but             
still why didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only         
the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and        
King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor          
secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of          
my joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to        
the Prater... True, we have no Prater here..."                              
  He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his           
forehead.                                                                   
  "It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I        
confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties        
here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack           
loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl            
give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at      
last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility        
of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear           
the details."                                                               
                                                    {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  "That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar,        
for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but        
what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories?             
Bring us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one      
archduke's as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only          
over a fire brigade of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and          
we'll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on            
purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke             
Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its                
defense- as much as to say: 'Heaven is with us, but heaven help you         
and your capital!' The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you          
expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit      
that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived.         
It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose        
you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a        
victory, what effect would that have on the general course of               
events? It's too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!"      
  "What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"                                        
  "Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count,        
our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."                              
  After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception,         
and especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not         
take in the full significance of the words he heard.                        
  "Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and        
showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was          
fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that        
your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be      
received as a savior."                                                      
                                                    {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 30}
  "Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince        
Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before          
Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as the          
fall of Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the         
bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard         
reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said.               
  "Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is            
defending us- doing it very badly, I think, but still he is                 
defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has           
not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and           
orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago          
have been in the mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would          
have spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires."                     
  "But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said            
Prince Andrew.                                                              
  "Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they             
daren't say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign,      
it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that      
will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin             
quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead,        
and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting            
between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If         
Prussia joins the Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will      
be war. If not it is merely a question of settling where the                
preliminaries of the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up."                  
  "What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,         
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what          
luck the man has!"                                                          
                                                    {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 35}
  "Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to      
indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he         
repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down      
laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u!* I          
shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!"         
-                                                                           
  *"We must let him off the u!"                                             
-                                                                           
  "But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the          
campaign is over?"                                                          
                                                    {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 40}
  "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."              
                                                    {BK2|CH10 ^paragraph 45}
  "If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again                
becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.              
  When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in      
a clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows,      
he felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far        
away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery,              
Bonaparte's new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience      
with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.                             
  He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of            
musketry and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his             
ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were            
descending the hill, the French were firing, and he felt his heart          
palpitating as he rode forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily      
whistling all around, and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as      
he had not done since childhood.                                            
  He woke up...                                                             
  "Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself        
like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.                        
                                                                            
BK2|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first        
thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be                 
presented to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War,        
the polite Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's                     
conversation. Having dressed for his attendance at court in full            
parade uniform, which he had not worn for a long time, he went into         
Bilibin's study fresh, animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged.      
In the study were four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With              
Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a secretary to the embassy,               
Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the             
others.                                                                     
  The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay             
society men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which             
Bilibin, their leader, called les notres.* This set, consisting almost      
exclusively of diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had         
nothing to do with war or politics but related to high society, to          
certain women, and to the official side of the service. These               
gentlemen received Prince Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they        
did not extend to many. From politeness and to start conversation,          
they asked him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then      
the talk went off into merry jests and gossip.                              
-                                                                           
  *Ours.                                                                    
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  "But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of a        
fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his              
appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.      
Can you fancy the figure he cut?..."                                        
  "But the worst of it, gentlemen- I am giving Kuragin away to you- is      
that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking          
advantage of it!"                                                           
  Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over         
its arm. He began to laugh.                                                 
  "Tell me about that!" he said.                                            
  "Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.                    
                                                    {BK2|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  "You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew,      
"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the           
Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing          
among the women!"                                                           
  "La femme est la compagne de l'homme,"* announced Prince                  
Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.      
-                                                                           
  *"Woman is man's companion."                                              
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK2|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's          
face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom- he had to              
admit- he had almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the            
butt of this set.                                                           
  "Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski.            
"Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses politics- you should see his        
gravity!"                                                                   
  He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began             
talking to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered        
round these two.                                                            
  "The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began          
Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without              
expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless      
His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our                 
alliance...                                                                 
  "Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him      
by the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than              
nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the          
nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end."        
And he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite           
finished.                                                                   
                                                    {BK2|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  "Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden      
mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with            
satisfaction.                                                               
  Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was               
evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain        
the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.            
  "Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in            
this house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I         
can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it           
would be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more         
difficult, and I beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be        
shown him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you,               
Hippolyte, of course the women."                                            
  "We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours,"        
kissing his finger tips.                                                    
  "In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane         
interests," said Bilibin.                                                   
                                                    {BK2|CH11 ^paragraph 25}
  "I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,            
gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew          
looking at his watch.                                                       
  "Where to?"                                                               
  "To the Emperor."                                                         
  "Oh! Oh! Oh!" Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come         
back early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand."      
  "When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the        
way that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said            
Bilibin, accompanying him to the hall.                                      
                                                    {BK2|CH11 ^paragraph 30}
  "I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the facts, I        
can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.                                         
  "Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for              
giving audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do         
it, as you will see."                                                       
                                                                            
BK2|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he        
had been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into        
his face and just nodded to him with to him with his long head. But         
after it was over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day                
ceremoniously informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give           
him an audience. The Emperor Francis received him standing in the           
middle of the room. Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was         
struck by the fact that the Emperor seemed confused and blushed as          
if not knowing what to say.                                                 
  "Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly.                 
  Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:      
"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor          
spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions-           
the answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not            
interest him.                                                               
  "At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor.                
  "I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at         
the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after          
five in the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and         
expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account,           
which he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the        
Emperor smiled and interrupted him.                                         
                                                     {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  "How many miles?"                                                         
  "From where to where, Your Majesty?"                                      
  "From Durrenstein to Krems."                                              
  "Three and a half miles, Your Majesty."                                   
  "The French have abandoned the left bank?"                                
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  "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?"                             
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
  "At seven o'clock, I believe."                                            
  "At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!"                              
  The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew                
withdrew and was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides.          
Everywhere he saw friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's      
adjutant reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and            
offered him his own house. The Minister of War came up and                  
congratulated him on the Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which      
the Emperor was conferring on him. The Empress' chamberlain invited         
him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see him. He did      
not know whom to answer, and for a few seconds collected his thoughts.      
Then the Russian ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the        
window, and began to talk to him.                                           
  Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was                
joyfully received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was         
awarded the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army                
received rewards. Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend        
the whole morning calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries.            
Between four and five in the afternoon, having made all his calls,          
he was returning to Bilibin's house thinking out a letter to his            
father about the battle and his visit to Brunn. At the door he found a      
vehicle half full of luggage. Franz, Bilibin's man, was dragging a          
portmanteau with some difficulty out of the front door.                     
  Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to bookshop          
to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent          
some time in the shop.                                                      
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "What is it?" he asked.                                                   
  "Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the            
portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The         
scoundrel is again at our heels!"                                           
  "Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew.                                          
  Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed                
excitement.                                                                 
  "There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This              
affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without        
striking a blow!"                                                           
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 25}
  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.                                                                
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 30}
  "What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that        
Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat          
is now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or         
two."                                                                       
  "What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was           
mined?"                                                                     
  "That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why."          
  Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.                                         
  "But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It      
will be cut off," said he.                                                  
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 35}
  "That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered           
Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday,             
those gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux,* Murat, Lannes,and Belliard,      
mount and ride to bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)             
'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is mined         
and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its          
head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up        
the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign           
the Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and         
take it!' 'Yes, let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the        
bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of         
the Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication."          
-                                                                           
  *The marshalls.                                                           
-                                                                           
  "Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news         
grieved him and yet he was pleased.                                         
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 40}
  As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless        
situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead        
it out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift           
him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to      
fame! Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching         
the army he would give an opinion at the war council which would be         
the only one that could save the army, and how he alone would be            
entrusted with the executing of the plan.                                   
  "Stop this jesting," he said                                              
  "I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder.         
These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white                   
handkerchiefs; they assure the officer on duty that they, the               
marshals, are on their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets      
them enter the tete-de-pont.* They spin him a thousand gasconades,          
saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a        
meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg,           
and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace         
the officers, crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French        
battalion gets to the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary      
material into the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length         
appears the lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von               
Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of         
the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another's          
hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince          
Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed,      
so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his            
rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so               
dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y        
voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur               
l'ennemi!"*[2] In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did         
not forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due                 
appreciation. "The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes        
the guns, and the bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went        
on, his excitement subsiding under the delightful interest of his           
own story, "is that the sergeant in charge of the cannon which was          
to give the signal to fire the mines and blow up the bridge, this           
sergeant, seeing that the French troops were running onto the               
bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes stayed his hand. The sergeant,        
who was evidently wiser than his general, goes up to Auersperg and          
says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are the French!' Murat,         
seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed to speak, turns          
to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true Gascon) and says:      
'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian discipline, if you             
allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It was a stroke of           
genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and orders the          
sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair of the         
Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor               
rascality...."                                                              
-                                                                           
  *Bridgehead.                                                              
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 45}
  *[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        
Bilibin."It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as      
at Ulm... it is..."- he seemed to be trying to find the right               
expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes [It is... it        
is a bit of Mack. We are Macked]," he concluded, feeling that he had        
produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His            
hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a      
slight smile he began to examine his nails.                                 
  "Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had         
risen and was going toward his room.                                        
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 50}
  "I am going away."                                                        
  "Where to?"                                                               
  "To the army."                                                            
  "But you meant to stay another two days?"                                 
  "But now I am off at once."                                               
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 55}
  And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went        
to his room.                                                                
  "Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been         
thinking about you. Why are you going?"                                     
  And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles        
vanished from his face.                                                     
  Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.                
  "Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back          
to the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher,          
it is heroism!"                                                             
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 60}
  "Not at all," said Prince Andrew.                                         
  "But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the           
other side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the          
contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no         
longer fit for anything else.... You have not been ordered to return        
and have not been dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and          
go with us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to         
Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I will travel             
comfortably in my caleche."                                                 
  "Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski.                               
  "I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are         
you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two          
things," and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you            
will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will         
share defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army."                       
  And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was           
insoluble.                                                                  
                                                    {BK2|CH12 ^paragraph 65}
  "I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he           
thought: "I am going to save the army."                                     
  "My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin.                           
                                                                            
BK2|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War,               
Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would            
find it and fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.       
  In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the          
heavy baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf      
Prince Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was         
moving with great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was          
so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a              
carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack           
commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage            
wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his own             
luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him      
as he went along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly      
flight confirmed these rumors.                                              
  "Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des             
extremites de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme             
sort- (le sort de l'armee d'Ulm)."* He remembered these words in            
Bonaparte's address to his army at the beginning of the campaign,           
and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a             
feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. "And should there be         
nothing left but to die?" he thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it      
no worse than others."                                                      
-                                                                           
  *"That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the           
earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate- (the          
fate of the army at Ulm)."                                                  
                                                     {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of                    
detachments, carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and           
vehicles of all kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy         
road, three and sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and          
before, as far as ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels,         
the creaking of carts and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the           
crack of whips, shouts, the urging of horses, and the swearing of           
soldiers, orderlies, and officers. All along the sides of the road          
fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and                   
broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for            
something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies,              
crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from        
them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At each ascent          
or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the din of            
shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud              
pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,        
traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers           
directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their      
voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their           
faces that they despaired of the possibility of checking this               
disorder.                                                                   
  "Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski,              
recalling Bilibin's words.                                                  
  Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up          
to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse              
vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available               
materials and looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet,           
and a caleche. A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in              
shawls sat behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle.          
Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier        
when his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the             
woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating         
the soldier who was driving the woman's vehicle for trying to get           
ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of           
the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew           
she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin arms from         
under the woolen shawl, cried:                                              
  "Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect      
me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh      
Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost      
our people..."                                                              
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                                                       
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                     
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's            
this disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."                              
  Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the         
doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a      
sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he          
galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in          
chief was.                                                                  
  On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,      
intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to            
sort out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his             
mind. "This is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking        
as he went up to the window of the first house, when a familiar             
voice called him by name.                                                   
  He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the              
little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed                
something, and flourishing his arm, called him to enter.                    
  "Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he           
shouted.                                                                    
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant      
having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he      
had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm.          
This was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing            
countenance.                                                                
  "Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski.                       
  "Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.                             
  "Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked                
Nesvitski.                                                                  
  "I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I          
could do to get here."                                                      
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  "And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,        
we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and            
have something to eat."                                                     
  "You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,      
Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other         
adjutant.                                                                   
  "Where are headquarters?"                                                 
  "We are to spend the night in Znaim."                                     
  "Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said             
Nesvitski. "They've made up splendid packs for me- fit to cross the         
Bohemian mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's         
the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added,        
noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.                 
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 35}
  "It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.                                    
  He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife        
and the convoy officer.                                                     
  "What is the commander in chief doing here?" he asked.                    
  "I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.                                
  "Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,               
abominable, quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off          
to the house where the commander in chief was.                              
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 40}
  Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his      
suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince         
Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the        
house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the                
Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little           
Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk,        
with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom            
upwards. Kozlovski's face looked worn- he too had evidently not             
slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to        
him.                                                                        
  "Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to           
the clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."                               
  "One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing           
angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.                                   
  Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and          
dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the         
sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him,         
the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the          
clerk and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to         
the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks         
holding the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that                 
something important and disastrous was about to happen.                     
  He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.                             
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 45}
  "Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration."      
  "What about capitulation?"                                                
  "Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."                    
  Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.        
Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened,         
and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the              
doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the              
expression of the commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to          
be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of         
his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant's face without             
recognizing him.                                                            
  "Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.                          
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 50}
  "One moment, your excellency."                                            
  Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,          
impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in            
chief.                                                                      
  "I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew              
rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.                                 
  Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"                                
  Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.                           
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 55}
  "Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may      
Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"                                 
  His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his         
left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which        
he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a               
gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration         
kissed him on the neck instead.                                             
  "Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage.      
"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.                                     
  "Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to            
remain with Prince Bagration's detachment."                                 
  "Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed,        
he added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!"                  
                                                    {BK2|CH13 ^paragraph 60}
  They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.        
  "There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old         
man's penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's         
mind. "If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,"        
he added as if speaking to himself.                                         
  Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him      
and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar            
near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the      
empty eye socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those          
men's death," thought Bolkonski.                                            
  "That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said.               
  Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had            
been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently         
swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince            
Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With                
delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his         
interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court         
concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew.          
                                                                            
BK2|CH14                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the          
army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported      
that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing        
in immense force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the              
troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at      
Krems, Napoleon's army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut      
him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty                 
thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If      
Kutuzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops          
arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown      
parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior         
forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with              
Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat along the road from Krems          
to Olmutz, to unite with the troops arriving from Russia, he risked         
being forestalled on that road by the French who had crossed the            
Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and transport, having          
to accept battle on the march against an enemy three times as               
strong, who would hem him in from two sides.                                
  Kutuzov chose this latter course.                                         
  The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were      
advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles         
off on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the        
French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the            
French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army          
to a disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to          
forestall the French with his whole army was impossible. The road           
for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the         
road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.                                  
  The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard,        
four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the                
Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march      
without resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and      
if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as          
long as possible. Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road      
to Znaim.                                                                   
  Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills,            
with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as        
stragglers by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road          
at Hollabrunn a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching          
Hollabrunn from Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to             
march for some days before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration            
with his four thousand hungry, exhausted men would have to detain           
for days the whole enemy army that came upon him at Hollabrunn,             
which was clearly impossible. But a freak of fate made the                  
impossible possible. The success of the trick that had placed the           
Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a fight led Murat          
to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way. Meeting Bagration's weak        
detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutuzov's whole           
army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of           
the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna, and with          
this object offered a three days' truce on condition that both              
armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that        
negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he                 
therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count          
Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed        
Murat's emissary and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed.         
Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace             
negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days' truce.           
Bagration replied that he was not authorized either to accept or            
refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov to report the offer he      
had received.                                                               
                                                     {BK2|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving                 
Bagration's exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport           
and heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French)          
advance if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the        
only, and a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On                 
receiving the news he immediately dispatched Adjutant General               
Wintzingerode, who was in attendance on him, to the enemy camp.             
Wintzingerode was not merely to agree to the truce but also to offer        
terms of capitulation, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back        
to hasten to the utmost the movements of the baggage trains of the          
entire army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration's exhausted and           
hungry detachment, which alone covered this movement of the                 
transport and of the whole army, had to remain stationary in face of        
an enemy eight times as strong as itself.                                   
  Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which          
were in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to        
pass, and also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered,          
proved correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen        
miles from Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal          
of a truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the             
following letter to Murat:                                                  
-                                                                           
                                 Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,           
                                  at eight o'clock in the morning           
                                                    {BK2|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  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           
                                                    {BK2|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to        
Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all      
the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim         
escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,        
dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first            
time for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was          
in store for him.                                                           
                                                                            
BK2|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who        
had persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and              
reported himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet             
reached Murat's detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In             
Bagration's detachment no one knew anything of the general position of      
affairs. They talked of peace but did not believe in its                    
possibility; others talked of a battle but also disbelieved in the          
nearness of an engagement. Bagration, knowing Bolkonski to be a             
favorite and trusted adjutant, received him with distinction and            
special marks of favor, explaining to him that there would probably be      
an engagement that day or the next, and giving him full liberty to          
remain with him during the battle or to join the rearguard and have an      
eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very important."                
  "However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said                 
Bagration as if to reassure Prince Andrew.                                  
  "If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a         
medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he        
wishes to stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a           
brave officer," thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying,         
asked the prince's permission to ride round the position to see the         
disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be          
sent to execute an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly        
dressed man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of          
speaking French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince         
Andrew.                                                                     
  On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who        
seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors,                
benches, and fencing from the village.                                      
  "There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff          
officer pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in          
hand. And there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and         
sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again.      
I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a              
moment."                                                                    
                                                     {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  "Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese,"          
said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.                
  "Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you              
something."                                                                 
  They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed      
and weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.             
  "Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the      
reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than         
once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The              
prince gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you,              
Captain," and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer           
who without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to           
dry), in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not            
altogether comfortably.                                                     
  "Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he                
continued. "One would think that as an artillery officer you would set      
a good example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be      
sounded and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The        
staff officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of      
you, all!" he added in a tone of command.                                   
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery          
officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged        
foot to the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent,         
kindly eyes from Prince Andrew to the staff officer.                        
  "The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain            
Tushin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently               
wishing to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt         
that his jest was unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.      
  "Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to           
preserve his gravity.                                                       
  Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure.      
There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather            
comic, but extremely attractive.                                            
  The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode         
on.                                                                         
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking      
soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left          
some entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which           
showed up red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt               
sleeves despite the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host      
of white ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown          
up from behind the bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer      
rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it      
they came upon some dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by             
others, who ran from the entrenchment. They had to hold their noses         
and put their horses to a trot to escape from the poisoned                  
atmosphere of these latrines.                                               
  "Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,"* said the staff         
officer.                                                                    
-                                                                           
  *"This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince."                           
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  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.               
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,         
crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who,           
tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to        
him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with                
reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths,         
and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,        
licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats.      
All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home        
awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before      
an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field.        
After passing a chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev              
grenadiers- fine fellows busy with similar peaceful affairs- near           
the shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different          
from the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of            
grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while         
two others were flourishing their switches and striking him                 
regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A stout           
major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the screams        
kept repeating:                                                             
  "It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,           
honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor          
in him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!"                                    
  So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but               
unnatural screams, continued.                                               
  "Go on, go on!" said the major.                                           
  A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his            
face stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the          
adjutant as he rode by.                                                     
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 30}
  Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our          
front line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and            
left flanks, but in the center where the men with a flag of truce           
had passed that morning, the lines were so near together that the           
men could see one another's faces and speak to one another. Besides         
the soldiers who formed the picket line on either side, there were          
many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their           
strange foreign enemies.                                                    
  Since early morning- despite an injunction not to approach the            
picket line- the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away.         
The soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a             
curiosity, no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the         
sight-seers and grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew            
halted to have a look at the French.                                        
  "Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a      
Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer        
and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark          
to him jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to            
keep up with him. There now, Sidorov!"                                      
  "Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was             
considered an adept at French.                                              
  The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince            
Andrew recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying.          
Dolokhov had come from the left flank where their regiment was              
stationed, with his captain.                                                
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 35}
  "Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and        
trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible          
to him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?"                             
  Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot         
dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about        
the campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the               
Russians, was trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and         
had fled all the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the           
Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the French.                     
  "We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you             
off," said Dolokhov.                                                        
  "Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said         
the French grenadier.                                                       
  The French onlookers and listeners laughed.                               
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 40}
  "We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,"* said Dolokhov.        
-                                                                           
  *"On vous fera danser."                                                   
-                                                                           
  "Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?"* asked a Frenchman.                            
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 45}
-                                                                           
  *"What's he singing about?"                                               
-                                                                           
  "It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a      
former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the        
others..."                                                                  
  "Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.         
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 50}
  "Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily.       
  "The devil skin your Emperor."                                            
  And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and                 
shouldering his musket walked away.                                         
  "Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain.                         
  "Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now,      
Sidorov, you have a try!"                                                   
                                                    {BK2|CH15 ^paragraph 55}
  Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber               
meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter,               
Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.      
  "Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy        
and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the            
French involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed      
to be to unload the muskets, muskets, explode the ammunition, and           
all return home as quickly as possible.                                     
  But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and            
entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon      
confronted one another as before.                                           
                                                                            
BK2|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left,              
Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff           
officer had told him the whole field could be seen. Here he                 
dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest of the four unlimbered          
cannon. Before the guns an artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he      
stood at attention when the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his      
measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and         
still farther back picket ropes and artillerymen's bonfires. To the         
left, not far from the farthest cannon, was a small, newly constructed      
wattle shed from which came the sound of officers' voices in eager          
conversation.                                                               
  It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and        
the greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just          
facing it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon          
Grabern could be seen, and in three places to left and right the            
French troops amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of        
whom were evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To           
the left from that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a      
battery, but it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye.        
Our right flank was posted on a rather steep incline which dominated        
the French position. Our infantry were stationed there, and at the          
farthest point the dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery          
stood and from which Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the      
easiest and most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating          
us from Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse,        
in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood.         
The French line was wider than ours, and it was plain that they             
could easily outflank us on both sides. Behind our position was a           
steep and deep dip, making it difficult for artillery and cavalry to        
retire. Prince Andrew took out his notebook and, leaning on the             
cannon, sketched a plan of the position. He made some notes on two          
points, intending to mention them to Bagration. His idea was, first,        
to concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly, to            
withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrew,           
being always near the commander in chief, closely following the mass        
movements and general orders, and constantly studying historical            
accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the course of        
events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only         
important possibilities: "If the enemy attacks the right flank," he         
said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs must        
hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that          
case the dragoons could successfully make a flank counterattack. If         
they attack our center we, having the center battery on this high           
ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat          
to the dip by echelons." So he reasoned.... All the time he had been        
beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly,         
but as often happens had not understood a word of what they were            
saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the         
shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.             
  "No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew,         
a familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what      
is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend."      
  Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't      
escape it anyhow."                                                          
  "All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third        
manly voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are        
very wise, because you can take everything along with you- vodka and        
snacks."                                                                    
                                                     {BK2|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,          
laughed.                                                                    
  "Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the              
familiar voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is.           
Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there        
is no sky but only an atmosphere."                                          
  The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.                  
  "Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said.                
  "Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in         
the sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable,           
philosophizing voice with pleasure.                                         
                                                    {BK2|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a      
future life..."                                                             
  He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air;              
nearer and nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon           
ball, as if it had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded          
into the ground near the shed with super human force, throwing up a         
mass of earth. The ground seemed to groan at the terrible impact.           
  And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth      
and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed          
followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer        
who hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.            
                                                                            
BK2|CH17                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,         
looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes           
ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto          
motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was a      
battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two        
mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A        
small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,         
probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had      
not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a               
report. The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and            
galloped back to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the              
cannonade behind him growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our        
guns had begun to reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the            
parleys had taken place, came the report of musketry.                       
  Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern             
letter, and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at      
once moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the            
Russian wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the          
Emperor to crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.         
  "It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood      
rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?"       
  Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and           
drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same      
rapid movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets          
ready, and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that         
filled his heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but                   
enjoyable!" was what the face of each soldier and each officer              
seemed to say.                                                              
  Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up,          
he saw, in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming         
toward him. The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and      
riding a white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped,          
waiting for him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and        
recognizing Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while        
Prince Andrew told him what he had seen.                                    
                                                     {BK2|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince          
Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.        
Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face           
and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking           
and feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that           
impassive face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince           
Bagration bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew        
told him, and said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that        
everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he      
had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride,             
spoke quickly. Prince Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental        
accent, spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that           
there was no need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the      
direction of Tushin's battery. Prince Andrew followed with the              
suite. Behind Prince Bagration rode an officer of the suite, the            
prince's personal adjutant, Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff          
officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian- an          
accountant who had asked permission to be present at the battle out of      
curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around           
him with a naive smile of satisfaction and presented a strange              
appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet        
coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy officer's saddle.             
  "He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to        
the accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach              
already."                                                                   
  "Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather            
cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of                 
Zherkov's joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really      
was.                                                                        
  "It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer.        
(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing      
a prince, but could not get it quite right.)                                
  By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a            
ball struck the ground in front of them.                                    
                                                    {BK2|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  "What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive          
smile.                                                                      
  "A French pancake," answered Zherkov.                                     
  "So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!"        
  He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished              
speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which      
suddenly ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a           
Cossack, riding a little to their right and behind the accountant,          
crashed to earth with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent         
over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant             
stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive                
curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled.             
  Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing           
the cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to         
say, "Is it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with      
the case of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged         
his saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber      
of a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story      
of Suvorov giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the                  
recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had             
reached the battery at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined        
the battlefield.                                                            
                                                    {BK2|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  "Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman                
standing by the ammunition wagon.                                           
  He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you                  
frightened here?" and the artilleryman understood him.                      
  "Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired,              
freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.                    
  "Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he        
rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.                               
  As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and         
his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they           
could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly        
back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number        
One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while          
Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's            
mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over           
the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the           
general, looked out shading his eyes with his small hand.                   
                                                    {BK2|CH17 ^paragraph 20}
  "Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a         
feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill suited to      
his weak figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!"               
  Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his         
cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military           
salute but like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though      
Tushin's guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing      
incendiary balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just               
opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.          
  No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but             
after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had          
great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set          
fire to the village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the            
officer's report, and began deliberately to examine the whole               
battlefield extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on         
our right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was                  
stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring        
rolling and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the        
right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to          
Bagration a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the          
horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration ordered two          
battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank.         
The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that if           
these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support.          
Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked        
at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's            
remark was just and that really no answer could be made to it. But          
at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the              
commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses        
of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was          
in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince             
Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off        
at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with            
orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour        
later with the news that the commander of the dragoons had already          
retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been            
opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened          
to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.                                  
  "Very good!" said Bagration.                                              
  As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also,         
and as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go          
there himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in         
command (the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at             
Braunau) that he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow      
in the rear, as the right flank would probably not be able to               
withstand the enemy's attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion      
that had been in support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince           
Andrew listened attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the              
commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to his                 
surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that Prince           
Bagration tried to make it appear that everything done by necessity,        
by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if not      
by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions.              
Prince Andrew noticed, however, that though what happened was due to        
chance and was independent of the commander's will, owing to the            
tact Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable. Officers who         
approached him with disturbed countenances became calm; soldiers and        
officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his presence, and         
were evidently anxious to display their courage before him.                 
                                                                            
BK2|CH18                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right           
flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard        
but where on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer         
they got to the hollow the less they could see but the more they            
felt the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet             
wounded men. One with a bleeding head and no cap was being dragged          
along by two soldiers who supported him under the arms. There was a         
gurgle in his throat and he was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently      
hit him in the throat or mouth. Another was walking sturdily by             
himself but without his musket, groaning aloud and swinging his arm         
which had just been hurt, while blood from it was streaming over his        
greatcoat as from a bottle. He had that moment been wounded and his         
face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing a road they descended      
a steep incline and saw several men lying on the ground; they also met      
a crowd of soldiers some of whom were unwounded. The soldiers were          
ascending the hill breathing heavily, and despite the general's             
presence were talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them            
rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and an          
officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after the crowd of      
retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration rode up to the           
ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning           
the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked         
with smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with           
it. Some were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the             
touchpans or taking charges from their pouches, while others were           
firing, though who they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke      
which there was no wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and               
whistling of bullets were often heard. "What is this?" thought              
Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of soldiers. "It can't be an            
attack, for they are not moving; it can't be a square- for they are         
not drawn up for that."                                                     
  The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a      
pleasant smile- his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,      
giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as      
a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had         
been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been        
repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack had        
been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had            
occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know            
what had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to          
him, and could not say with certainty whether the attack had been           
repulsed or his regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at        
the commencement of the action balls and shells began flying all            
over his regiment and hitting men and that afterwards someone had           
shouted "Cavalry!" and our men had begun firing. They were still            
firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at French             
infantry who had come into the hollow and were firing at our men.           
Prince Bagration bowed his head as a sign that this was exactly what        
he had desired and expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to      
bring down the two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom they had          
just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the changed expression on          
Prince Bagration's face at this moment. It expressed the                    
concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a man who          
on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water. The          
dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of         
profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes looked before him          
eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although           
his movements were still slow and measured.                                 
  The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating      
him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.           
"Please, your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing         
for support at an officer of the suite who turned away from him.            
"There, you see!" and he drew attention to the bullets whistling,           
singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the tone          
of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who           
has picked up an ax: "We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister         
your hands." He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and           
his half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words.           
The staff officer joined in the colonel's appeals, but Bagration did        
not reply; he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to      
give room for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking,        
the curtain of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising      
wind, began to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible          
hand, and the hill opposite, with the French moving about on it,            
opened out before them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French      
column advancing against them and winding down over the uneven ground.      
One could already see the soldiers' shaggy caps, distinguish the            
officers from the men, and see the standard flapping against its            
staff.                                                                      
  "They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite.           
  The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The         
clash would take place on this side of it...                                
                                                     {BK2|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly              
formed up and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the            
laggards, came two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order.         
Before they had reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of         
men marching in step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to        
Bagration, marched a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a      
stupid and happy expression- the same man who had rushed out of the         
wattle shed. At that moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how      
dashing a fellow he would appear as he passed the commander.                
  With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly         
with his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to           
his full height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with      
the heavy tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He          
carried close to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and      
not like a real weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and         
now back at the men without losing step, his whole powerful body            
turning flexibly. It was as if all the powers of his soul were              
concentrated on passing the commander in the best possible manner, and      
feeling that he was doing it well he was happy. "Left... left...            
left..." he seemed to repeat to himself at each alternate step; and in      
time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of soldiers             
burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in step, and each one of        
these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating to himself at each        
alternate step, "Left... left... left..." A fat major skirted a             
bush, puffing and falling out of step; a soldier who had fallen             
behind, his face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot,             
panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the air,      
flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell into the           
column to the measure of "Left... left!" "Close up!" came the               
company commander's voice in jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a         
semicircle round something where the ball had fallen, and an old            
trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside      
the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a        
hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous silence and the           
regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear      
left... left... left.                                                       
  "Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration.                                 
  "Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from      
the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on         
Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We         
know that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though             
fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.           
  The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.                           
                                                    {BK2|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and              
dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over        
his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The            
head of the French column, with its officers leading, appeared from         
below the hill.                                                             
  "Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous              
voice, turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging        
his arms, he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the            
awkward gait of a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible          
power was leading him forward, and experienced great happiness.             
  The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside               
Bagration, could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets,        
and even their faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who,         
with gaitered legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with               
difficulty.) Prince Bagration gave no further orders and silently           
continued to walk on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after         
another rang out from the French, smoke appeared all along their            
uneven ranks, and musket shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among      
them the round-faced officer who had marched so gaily and                   
complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard,                 
Bagration looked round and shouted, "Hurrah!"                               
  "Hurrah- ah!- ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and            
passing Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular        
but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.           
                                                                            
BK2|CH19                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right        
flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed          
to set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French                
advance. The French were putting out the fire which the wind was            
spreading, and thus gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the          
center to the other side of the dip in the ground at the rear was           
hurried and noisy, but the different companies did not get mixed.           
But our left- which consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the      
Pavlograd hussars- was simultaneously attacked and outflanked by            
superior French forces under Lannes and was thrown into confusion.          
Bagration had sent Zherkov to the general commanding that left flank        
with orders to retreat immediately.                                         
  Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse             
about and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his        
courage failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it        
was dangerous.                                                              
  Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where        
the firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where        
they could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.               
  The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander      
of the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which                
Dolokhov was serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left      
flank had been assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment          
in which Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two          
commanders were much exasperated with one another and, long after           
the action had begun on the right flank and the French were already         
advancing, were engaged in discussion with the sole object of               
offending one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry,        
were by no means ready for the impending action. From privates to           
general they were not expecting a battle and were engaged in                
peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the horses and the                
infantry collecting wood.                                                   
  "He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the             
hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so         
let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars...               
Bugler, sount ze retreat!"                                                  
                                                     {BK2|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling          
together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the               
capotes of Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the             
milldam and forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The         
general in command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky         
steps, and having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and        
rode to the Pavlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows        
but with secret malevolence in their hearts.                                
  "Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my           
men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to              
occupy the position and prepare for an attack."                             
  "I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!"           
suddenly replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..."         
  "I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if      
you are not aware of the fact..."                                           
  "Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel,             
touching his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so          
goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't      
vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!"                                  
                                                    {BK2|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  "You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own                
pleasure and I won't allow it to be said!"                                  
  Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the          
general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front      
line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the            
bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and        
they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the         
line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that          
it was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken            
ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The           
general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another         
like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to         
detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination         
successfully. As there was nothing to said, and neither wished to give      
occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave           
the range of fire, they would have remained there for a long time           
testing each other's courage had it not been that just then they heard      
the rattle of musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them in the        
wood. The French had attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It      
was no longer possible for the hussars to retreat with the infantry.        
They were cut off from the line of retreat on the left by the               
French. However inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to          
attack in order to cut away through for themselves.                         
  The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to             
mount before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns          
bridge, there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and           
again that terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear-                  
resembling the line separating the living from the dead- lay between        
them. All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether      
they would they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it,         
agitated them all.                                                          
  The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to                 
questions put to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately           
insisting on having his own way, gave an order. No one said anything        
definite, but the rumor of an attack spread through the squadron.           
The command to form up rang out and the sabers whizzed as they were         
drawn from their scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the left      
flank, infantry and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not          
himself know what to do, and this irresolution communicated itself          
to the men.                                                                 
  "If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at            
last the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which          
he had so often heard from his fellow hussars.                              
                                                    {BK2|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
  "Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot           
fo'ward!"                                                                   
  The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at        
the reins and started of his own accord.                                    
  Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his               
hussars and still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see          
distinctly but took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some         
way off.                                                                    
  "Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks         
drooping as he broke into a gallop.                                         
  Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more         
elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had          
been in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible- and now he      
had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but          
everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I        
will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.         
                                                    {BK2|CH19 ^paragraph 20}
  "Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now,"      
thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a          
full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was         
already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep      
over the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at         
that instant the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away      
from him, and Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be             
carried forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same             
spot. From behind him Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against         
him and looked angrily at him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped      
past.                                                                       
  "How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov           
asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle          
of a field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw         
nothing before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around          
him. There was warm blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the          
horse is killed." Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back,         
pinning his rider's leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled      
but could not rise. Rostov also tried to rise but fell back, his            
sabretache having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men             
were, and where the French, he did not know. There was no one near.         
  Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now      
the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself      
and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he           
wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something            
superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if      
it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find      
blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing      
some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a           
man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned,           
and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running           
behind. One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among        
the hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar.      
He was being held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him.       
  "It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will        
take me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing         
his eyes. "Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching                
Frenchmen, and though but a moment before he had been galloping to get      
at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful        
that he could not believe his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they             
running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom             
everyone is so fond of?" He remembered his mother's love for him,           
and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to            
kill him seemed impossible. "But perhaps they may do it!" For more          
than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the         
situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was        
already so close that the expression of his face could be seen. And         
the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding      
his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized his        
pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran         
with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the           
feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns            
bridge, but with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One         
single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed      
his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across the field      
with the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then             
turning his good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder          
of terror went through him: "No, better not look," he thought, but          
having reached the bushes he glanced round once more. The French had        
fallen behind, and just as he looked round the first man changed his        
run to a walk and, turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade           
farther back. Rostov paused. "No, there's some mistake," thought he.        
"They can't have wanted to kill me." But at the same time, his left         
arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He          
could run no more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov          
closed his eyes and stooped down. One bullet and then another whistled      
past him. He mustered his last remaining strength, took hold of his         
left hand with his right, and reached the bushes. Behind these were         
some Russian sharpshooters.                                                 
                                                                            
BK2|CH20                                                                    
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the               
outskirts of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting        
mixed, and retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his             
fear, uttered the senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in          
battle, and that word infected the whole crowd with a feeling of            
panic.                                                                      
  "Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives.                 
  The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the               
general realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment,      
and the thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service        
who had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters      
for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the        
recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and             
above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for                    
self-preservation, he clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring      
his horse, galloped to the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell      
around, but fortunately missed him. His one desire was to know what         
was happening and at any cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he         
had made one, so that he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years'         
service, who had never been censured, should not be held to blame.          
  Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind      
the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and      
descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides        
the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of             
soldiers attend to the voice of their commander, or would they,             
disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate              
shouts that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his           
furious purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former      
self, and the flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all continued          
to run, talking, firing into the air, and disobeying orders. The moral      
hesitation which decided the fate of battles was evidently culminating      
in a panic.                                                                 
  The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the      
powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at         
that moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any         
apparent reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and           
Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was                
Timokhin's company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood        
and, having lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French              
unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the          
enemy with such a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination         
that, taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets           
and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin, killed a Frenchman at           
close quarters and was the first to seize the surrendering French           
officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the battalions               
re-formed, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank in half         
were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join           
up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and Major         
Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies      
pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the                   
commander's stirrup, almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a      
bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was          
bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung.          
He had an officer's sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his            
blue eyes looked impudently into the commander's face, and his lips         
were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving instructions      
to Major Ekonomov, he could not help taking notice of the soldier.          
                                                     {BK2|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
  "Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to      
the French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I            
stopped the company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and          
spoke in abrupt sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I           
beg you will remember this, your excellency!"                               
  "All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major        
Ekonomov.                                                                   
  But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around           
his head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.        
  "A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your                 
excellency!"                                                                
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK2|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of           
the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the         
center, send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew             
also, to order the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When           
the supports attached to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the        
middle of the action by someone's order, the battery had continued          
firing and was only not captured by the French because the enemy could      
not surmise that anyone could have the effrontery to continue firing        
from four quite undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action      
of that battery led the French to suppose that here- in the center-         
the main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to      
attack this point, but on each occasion had been driven back by             
grapeshot from the four isolated guns on the hillock.                       
  Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in         
setting fire to Schon Grabern.                                              
  "Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine!          
Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen,           
brightening up.                                                             
  All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the         
direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the             
soldiers cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!"      
The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French           
columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as              
though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the        
right of the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery.             
  In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in            
successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed          
this battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our             
guns, one knocking over two horses and another tearing off a                
munition-wagon driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were,                
however, not diminished, but only changed character. The horses were        
replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were            
carried away, and the four guns were turned against the ten-gun             
battery. Tushin's companion officer had been killed at the beginning        
of the engagement and within an hour seventeen of the forty men of the      
guns' crews had been disabled, but the artillerymen were still as           
merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the French appearing           
below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.                          
                                                    {BK2|CH20 ^paragraph 15}
  Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly      
to "refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it,      
ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the             
French.                                                                     
  "Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels      
and working the screws himself.                                             
  Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always            
made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from           
gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders         
about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones,           
and shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute.           
His face grew more and more animated. Only when a man was killed or         
wounded did he frown and turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at      
the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the             
injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and,      
as is always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders         
taller and twice as broad as their officer- all looked at their             
commander like children in an embarrassing situation, and the               
expression on his face was invariably reflected on theirs.                  
  Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and      
activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense          
of fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded           
never occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more             
elated. It seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a         
day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and        
that the corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar        
ground. Though he thought of everything, considered everything, and         
did everything the best of officers could do in his position, he was        
in a state akin to feverish delirium or drunkenness.                        
  From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle         
and thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and                  
perspiring faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight        
of the blood of men and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on           
the enemy's side (always followed by a ball flying past and striking        
the earth, a man, a gun, a horse), from the sight of all these              
things a fantastic world of his own had taken possession of his             
brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure. The enemy's guns            
were in his fancy not guns but pipes from which occasional puffs            
were blown by an invisible smoker.                                          
                                                    {BK2|CH20 ^paragraph 20}
  "There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a           
small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left        
by the wind.                                                                
  "Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back."                       
  "What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing           
close by, who heard him muttering.                                          
  "Nothing... only a shell..." he answered.                                 
  "Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna"* was           
the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which           
was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their            
guns seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard          
Number One of the second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at           
him more often than at anyone else and took delight in his every            
movement. The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now                
diminishing, now increasing, seemed like someone's breathing. He            
listened intently to the ebb and flow of these sounds.                      
                                                    {BK2|CH20 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  *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.                        
                                                    {BK2|CH20 ^paragraph 30}
  "Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was            
saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice           
called above his head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!"                           
  Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had           
turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping         
voice:                                                                      
  "Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..."         
  "Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his        
superior.                                                                   
  "I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap.           
"I..."                                                                      
                                                    {BK2|CH20 ^paragraph 35}
  But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon      
ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.      
He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another          
ball stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.                     
  "Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance.                      
  The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the        
same order.                                                                 
  It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the          
space where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with      
a broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed             
horses. Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the          
limbers lay several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he      
approached and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the        
mere thought of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid,"        
thought he, and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the          
order and did not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns            
removed from their positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together        
with Tushin, stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from      
the French, he attended to the removal of the guns.                         
  "A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an         
artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!"                       
                                                    {BK2|CH20 ^paragraph 40}
  Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to        
seem not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two        
cannon that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down      
the hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind),              
Prince Andrew rode up to Tushin.                                            
  "Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to            
Tushin.                                                                     
  "Good-by, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-by, my dear      
fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes.        
                                                                            
BK2|CH21                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXI                                                               
-                                                                           
  The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,      
hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing            
dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous.           
The cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on      
the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns,      
continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range      
of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the           
staff, among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice         
sent to Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one         
another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to                
proceed, reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and,      
silently- fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep      
without knowing why- rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the           
orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves         
after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty          
infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's      
wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's"         
carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one      
hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat.                
  "Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For        
God's sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!"                                
  It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift      
and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.                  
  "Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"                            
  "Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on,           
lad," he said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the           
wounded officer?"                                                           
                                                     {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 5}
  "He has been set down. He died," replied someone.                         
  "Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,      
Antonov."                                                                   
  The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was        
pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on           
"Matvevna," the gun from which they had removed the dead officer.           
The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his        
breeches and arm.                                                           
  "What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on      
which Rostov sat.                                                           
  "No, it's a sprain."                                                      
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 10}
  "Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin.           
  "It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the                
artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if             
apologizing for the state of his gun.                                       
  It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by        
the infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they           
halted. It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the             
uniforms ten paces off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly,      
near by on the right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of      
shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and           
was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses. They           
all rushed out of the village again, but Tushin's guns could not move,      
and the artillerymen, Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances        
as they awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking      
eagerly, streamed out of a side street.                                     
  "Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.                                            
  "We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now,"         
said another.                                                               
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 15}
  "You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows!            
Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to        
drink?"                                                                     
  The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and             
again in the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded      
by the humming infantry as by a frame.                                      
  In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was            
flowing always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and         
the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and      
voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other             
sound in the darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the            
army was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt into one            
with the darkness of the night. After a while the moving mass became        
agitated, someone rode past on a white horse followed by his suite,         
and said something in passing: "What did he say? Where to, now?             
Halt, is it? Did he thank us?" came eager questions from all sides.         
The whole moving mass began pressing closer together and a report           
spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently those in front had         
halted. All remained where they were in the middle of the muddy road.       
  Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin,      
having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a                
dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a               
bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged          
himself to the fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering        
shook his whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but        
he kept awake kept awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which      
he could find no satisfactory position. He kept closing his eyes and        
then again looking at the fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red,         
and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure of Tushin who was sitting        
cross-legged like a Turk beside him. Tushin's large, kind, intelligent      
eyes were fixed with sympathy and commiseration on Rostov, who saw          
that Tushin with his whole heart wished to help him but could not.          
  From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry,         
who were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The           
sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud,        
the crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous        
rumble.                                                                     
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 20}
  It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through         
the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a          
storm. Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed              
before and around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on         
his heels, held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.           
  "You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company,      
your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"                           
  With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came          
up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns         
moved a trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers      
rushed to the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately,      
each trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding          
on to.                                                                      
  "You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them         
shouted hoarsely.                                                           
  Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg      
band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.          
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 25}
  "Must one die like a dog?" said he.                                       
  Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier      
ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.                             
  "A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you,              
fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire- we'll return it with                
interest," said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.        
  Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and         
passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.                                   
  "Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he.                 
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 30}
  "He's dead- why carry him?" said another.                                 
  "Shut up!"                                                                
  And they disappeared into the darkness with with their load.              
  "Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.                         
  "Yes."                                                                    
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 35}
  "Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,"        
said a gunner, coming up to Tushin.                                         
  "Coming, friend."                                                         
  Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,         
walked away from the fire.                                                  
  Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared      
for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some                  
commanding officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old        
man with the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton           
bone, and the general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years,      
flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with      
the signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and            
Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering         
eyes.                                                                       
  In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French,         
and the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture,             
shaking his head in perplexity- perhaps because the banner really           
interested him, perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was,      
to look on at a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next        
hut there was a French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our           
dragoons. Our officers were flocking in to look at him. Prince              
Bagration was thanking the individual commanders and inquiring into         
details of the action and our losses. The general whose regiment had        
been inspected at Braunau was informing the prince that as soon as the      
action began he had withdrawn from the wood, mustered the men who were      
woodcutting, and, allowing the French to pass him, had made a               
bayonet charge with two battalions and had broken up the French             
troops.                                                                     
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 40}
  "When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was              
disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come        
on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'- and            
that's what I did."                                                         
  The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not          
managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened.        
Perhaps it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid      
all that confusion what did or did not happen?                              
  "By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he continued-         
remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last               
interview with the gentleman-ranker- "that Private Dolokhov, who was        
reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence         
and particularly distinguished himself."                                    
  "I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,"              
chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the             
hussars all that day, but had heard about them from an infantry             
officer. "They broke up two squares, your excellency."                      
  Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of      
his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the      
glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious             
expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie      
devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:       
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 45}
  "Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:            
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were             
abandoned in the center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for          
someone. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left           
flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the            
very beginning of the action.) "I think I sent you?" he added, turning      
to the staff officer on duty.                                               
  "One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I           
can't understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had            
only just left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added,             
modestly.                                                                   
  Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the        
village and had already been sent for.                                      
  "Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince        
Andrew.                                                                     
  "Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff              
officer, with a smile to Bolkonski.                                         
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 50}
  "I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly        
and abruptly.                                                               
  All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way        
timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past           
the generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always           
was by the sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of           
the banner and stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.          
  "How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not          
so much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom            
Zherkov laughed loudest.                                                    
  Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his        
guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive      
present themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so            
excited that he had not thought about it until that moment. The             
officers' laughter confused him still more. He stood before                 
Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly able to               
mutter: "I don't know... your excellency... I had no men... your            
excellency."                                                                
  "You might have taken some from the covering troops."                     
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 55}
  Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that        
was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into        
trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who        
has blundered looks at an examiner.                                         
  The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not            
wishing to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture      
to intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows           
and his fingers twitched nervously.                                         
  "Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt        
voice," you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I          
went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two      
guns smashed, and no supports at all."                                      
  Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at               
Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.                             
  "And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he         
continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that            
battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company,"        
and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.        
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 60}
  Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show            
distrust in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to      
credit it, bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince          
Andrew went out with him.                                                   
  "Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin.                   
  Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He         
felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had        
hoped.                                                                      
-                                                                           
  "Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will        
all this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows              
before him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense.               
Irresistible drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his        
eyes, and the impression of those voices and faces and a sense of           
loneliness merged with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers-      
wounded and unwounded- it was they who were crushing, weighing down,        
and twisting the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm         
and shoulder. To rid himself of them he closed his eyes.                    
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 65}
  For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things      
appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,            
Sonya's thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov         
with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with          
Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier      
with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that          
were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and           
always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them,        
but they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair's            
breadth. It would not ache- it would be well- if only they did not          
pull it, but it was immpossible to get rid of them.                         
  He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung          
less than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling          
snow were fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the            
doctor had not come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was         
sitting naked at the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow        
body.                                                                       
  "Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or         
pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He              
sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.                                
  "Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his             
shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt      
and added: "What a lot of men have been crippled today- frightful!"         
  Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes         
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,      
bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his           
healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why        
did I come here?" he wondered.                                              
                                                    {BK2|CH21 ^paragraph 70}
  Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant      
of Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.                   
                                                                            
BK3                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                BOOK THREE: 1805                            
                                                                            
BK3|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his              
plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own               
advantage. He was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom      
getting on had become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he             
never rightly accounted to himself, but which formed the whole              
interest of his life, were constantly shaping themselves in his             
mind, arising from the circumstances and persons he met. Of these           
plans he had not merely one or two in his head but dozens, some only        
beginning to form themselves, some approaching achievement, and some        
in course of disintegration. He did not, for instance, say to himself:      
"This man now has influence, I must gain his confidence and friendship      
and through him obtain a special grant." Nor did he say to himself:         
"Pierre is a rich man, I must entice him to marry my daughter and lend      
me the forty thousand rubles I need." But when he came across came          
across a man of position his instinct immediately told him that this        
man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince Vasili            
took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become      
intimate with him, and finally make his request.                            
  He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an                   
appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time              
conferred the status of Councilor of State, and insisted on the             
young man accompanying him to Petersburg and staying at his house.          
With apparent absent-mindedness, yet with unhesitating assurance            
that he was doing the right thing, Prince Vasili did everything to get      
Pierre to marry his daughter. Had he thought out his plans                  
beforehand he could not have been so natural and shown such unaffected      
familiarity in intercourse with everybody both above and below him          
in social standing. Something always drew him toward those richer           
and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in seizing the         
most opportune moment for making use of people.                             
  Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and a rich man, felt      
himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset         
and preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He           
had to sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the           
purpose of which was not clear to him, to question his chief                
steward, to visit his estate near Moscow, and to receive many people        
who formerly did not even wish to know of his existence but would           
now have been offended and grieved had he chosen not to see them.           
These different people- businessmen, relations, and acquaintances           
alike- were all disposed to treat the young heir in the most                
friendly and flattering manner: they were all evidently firmly              
convinced of Pierre's noble qualities. He was always hearing such           
words as: "With your remarkable kindness," or, "With your excellent         
heart," "You are yourself so honorable Count," or, "Were he as              
clever as you," and so on, till he began sincerely to believe in his        
own exceptional kindness and extraordinary intelligence, the more so        
as in the depth of his heart it had always seemed to him that he            
really was very kind and intelligent. Even people who had formerly          
been spiteful toward him and evidently unfriendly now became gentle         
and affectionate. The angry eldest princess, with the long waist and        
hair plastered down like a doll's, had come into Pierre's room after        
the funeral. With drooping eyes and frequent blushes she told him           
she was very sorry about their past misunderstandings and did not           
now feel she had a right to ask him for anything, except only for           
permission, after the blow she had received, to remain for a few weeks      
longer in the house she so loved and where she had sacrificed so much.      
She could not refrain from weeping at these words. Touched that this        
statuesque princess could so change, Pierre took her hand and begged        
her forgiveness, without knowing what for. From that day the eldest         
princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped           
scarf for him.                                                              
  "Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with         
a great deal from the deceased," said Prince Vasili to him, handing         
him a deed to sign for the princess' benefit.                               
  Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to         
throw this bone- a bill for thirty thousand rubles- to the poor             
princess that it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the        
affair of the inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after            
that the princess grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became        
affectionate to him, especially the youngest, the pretty one with           
the mole, who often made him feel confused by her smiles and her own        
confusion when meeting him.                                                 
                                                      {BK3|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it      
would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he             
could not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides,        
he had no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or          
not. He was always busy and always felt in a state of mild and              
cheerful intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some         
important and general movement; that something was constantly expected      
of him, that if he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many        
people, but if he did this and that, all would be well; and he did          
what was demanded of him, but still that happy result always                
remained in the future.                                                     
  More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession of Pierre's          
affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of        
Count Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air        
of a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would          
not, for pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was         
the son of his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth,        
to the caprice of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few            
days he spent in Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would         
call Pierre, or go to him himself, and tell him what ought to be            
done in a tone of weariness and assurance, as if he were adding             
every time: "You know I am overwhelmed with business and it is              
purely out of charity that I trouble myself about you, and you also         
know quite well that what I propose is the only thing possible."            
  "Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince          
Vasili one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow,              
speaking as if he were saying something which had long since been           
agreed upon and could not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm        
giving you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important        
business here is now settled, and I ought to have been off long ago.        
Here is something I have received from the chancellor. I asked him for      
you, and you have been entered in the diplomatic corps and made a           
Gentleman of the Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open            
before you."                                                                
  Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words      
were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his               
career, wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili                   
interrupted him in the special deep cooing tone, precluding the             
possibility of interrupting his speech, which he used in extreme cases      
when special persuasion was needed.                                         
  "Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my                
conscience, and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever           
complained yet of being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you      
could throw it up tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself        
when you get to Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from        
these terrible recollections." Prince Vasili sighed. "Yes, yes, my          
boy. And my valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly                 
forgetting," he added. "You know, mon cher, your father and I had some      
accounts to settle, so I have received what was due from the Ryazan         
estate and will keep it; you won't require it. We'll go into the            
accounts later."                                                            
                                                     {BK3|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  By "what was due from the Ryazan estate" Prince Vasili meant several      
thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre's peasants, which the         
prince had retained for himself.                                            
  In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of          
gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather           
the rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasili had procured for          
him, and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so         
numerous that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of                 
bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some good, always        
in front of him but never attained.                                         
  Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in               
Petersburg. The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been             
reduced to the ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the              
provinces; Prince Andrew was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity      
to spend his nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his        
mind by intimate talks with a friend older than himself and whom he         
respected. His whole time was taken up with dinners and balls and           
was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili's house in the company of the stout      
princess, his wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene.                      
  Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of        
attitude toward him that had taken place in society.                        
  Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that         
what he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that          
remarks which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind            
became foolish as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary            
Hippolyte's stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now                  
everything Pierre said was charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say      
so, he could see that she wished to and only refrained out of regard        
for his modesty.                                                            
                                                     {BK3|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna      
Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added:          
"You will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful      
to see."                                                                    
  When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some      
link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and         
Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation            
were being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased           
him as an entertaining supposition.                                         
  Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the               
novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a           
diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very latest details of the           
Emperor Alexander's visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august             
friends had pledged themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold        
the cause of justice against the enemy of the human race. Anna              
Pavlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently              
relating to the young man's recent loss by the death of Count Bezukhov      
(everyone constantly considered it a duty to assure Pierre that he was      
greatly afflicted by the death of the father he had hardly known), and      
her melancholy was just like the august melancholy she showed at the        
mention of her most august Majesty the Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre      
felt flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna arranged the different groups in      
her drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in which         
were Prince Vasili and the generals, had the benefit of the                 
diplomat. Another group was at the tea table. Pierre wished to join         
the former, but Anna Pavlovna- who was in the excited condition of a        
commander on a battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant           
ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in action- seeing             
Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:                         
  "Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening." (She         
glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) "My dear Helene, be charitable        
to my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for ten             
minutes. And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count           
who will not refuse to accompany you."                                      
  The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre,           
looking as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.            
                                                     {BK3|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  "Isn't she exquisite?" she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately        
beauty as she glided away. "And how she carries herself! For so             
young a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It             
comes from her heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least        
worldly of men would occupy a most brilliant position in society.           
Don't you think so? I only wanted to know your opinion," and Anna           
Pavlovna let Pierre go.                                                     
  Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene's                
perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was just of her      
beauty and her remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in          
society.                                                                    
  The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed      
desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene and inclined rather to          
show her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if              
inquiring what she was to do with these people. On leaving them,            
Anna Pavlovna again touched Pierre's sleeve, saying: "I hope you won't      
say that it is dull in my house again," and she glanced at Helene.          
  Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the            
possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt          
coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to         
see Helene, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome        
and the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation,        
Helene turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she            
gave to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so           
little meaning for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt           
was just speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to        
Pierre's father, Count Bezukhov, and showed them her own box. Princess      
Helene asked to see the portrait of the aunt's husband on the box lid.      
  "That is probably the work of Vinesse," said Pierre, mentioning a         
celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the            
snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.       
                                                     {BK3|CH1 ^paragraph 25}
  He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the            
snuffbox, passing it across Helene's back. Helene stooped forward to        
make room, and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at             
evening parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut          
very low at front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like          
marble to Pierre, was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could      
not but perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near        
to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to have           
touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of      
perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see        
her marble beauty forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the      
charm of her body only covered by her garments. And having once seen        
this he could not help being aware it, just as we cannot renew an           
illusion we have once seen through.                                         
  "So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?" Helene seemed      
to say. "You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman           
who may belong to anyone- to you too," said her glance. And at that         
moment Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his             
wife, and that it could not be otherwise.                                   
  He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing          
at the altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know,          
he did not even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he          
knew not why, that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would           
happen.                                                                     
  Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more          
to see her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen         
her every day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could            
not, any more than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe           
grass through the mist and taking it for a tree can again take it           
for a tree after he has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass.           
She was terribly close to him. She already had power over him, and          
between them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of his      
own will.                                                                   
  "Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's      
voice, "I see you are all right there."                                     
                                                     {BK3|CH1 ^paragraph 30}
  And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done              
anything reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him         
that everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.          
  A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna         
said to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?"              
  This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and      
Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg             
house done up.                                                              
  "That's a good thing, but don't move from Prince Vasili's. It is          
good to have a friend like the prince," she said, smiling at Prince         
Vasili. "I know something about that. Don't I? And you are still so         
young. You need advice. Don't be angry with me for exercising an old        
woman's privilege."                                                         
  She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they            
have mentioned their age. "If you marry it will be a different thing,"      
she continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at      
Helene nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He        
muttered something and colored.                                             
                                                     {BK3|CH1 ^paragraph 35}
  When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking          
of what had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely             
understood that the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her         
beauty was mentioned he had said absent-mindedly: "Yes, she's good          
looking," he had understood that this woman might belong to him.            
  "But she's stupid. I have myself said she is stupid," he thought.         
"There is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites      
in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with           
her and she with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that's        
why he was sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her      
father... It's bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this        
(the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and        
was conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while         
thinking of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be      
his wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all        
he had thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her        
not as the daughter of Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body         
only veiled by its gray dress. "But no! Why did this thought never          
occur to me before?" and again he told himself that it was impossible,      
that there would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him            
dishonorable, in this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks      
and the words and looks of those who had seen them together. He             
recalled Anna Pavlovna's words and looks when she spoke to him about        
his house, recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasili and          
others, and was seized by terror lest he had already, in some way,          
bound himself to do something that was evidently wrong and that he          
ought not to do. But at the very time he was expressing this                
conviction to himself, in another part of his mind her image rose in        
all its womanly beauty.                                                     
                                                                            
BK3|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection        
in four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to      
visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son            
Anatole where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince      
Nicholas Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the             
daughter of that rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking      
these new affairs, Prince Vasili had to settle matters with Pierre,         
who, it is true, had latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in         
Prince Vasili's house where he was staying, and had been absurd,            
excited, and foolish in Helene's presence (as a lover should be),           
but had not yet proposed to her.                                            
  "This is all very fine, but things must be settled," said Prince          
Vasili to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that         
Pierre who was under such obligations to him ("But never mind that")        
was not behaving very well in this matter. "Youth, frivolity...             
well, God be with him," thought he, relishing his own goodness of           
heart, "but it must be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow            
will be Lelya's name day. I will invite two or three people, and if he      
does not understand what he ought to do then it will be my affair-          
yes, my affair. I am her father."                                           
  Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" and after the sleepless         
night when he had decided that to marry Helene would be a calamity and      
that he ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision,      
had not left Prince Vasili's and felt with terror that in people's          
eyes he was every day more and more connected with her, that it was         
impossible for him to return to his former conception of her, that          
he could not break away from her, and that though it would be a             
terrible thing he would have to unite his fate with hers. He might          
perhaps have been able to free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had      
rarely before given receptions) now hardly let a day go by without          
having an evening party at which Pierre had to be present unless he         
wished to spoil the general pleasure and disappoint everyone's              
expectation. Prince Vasili, in the rare moments when he was at home,        
would take Pierre's hand in passing and draw it downwards, or               
absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek for Pierre        
to kiss and would say: "Till tomorrow," or, "Be in to dinner or I           
shall not see you," or, "I am staying in for your sake," and so on.         
And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed in (as he said) for                
Pierre's sake, hardly exchanged a couple of words with him, Pierre          
felt unable to disappoint him. Every day he said to himself one and         
the same thing: "It is time I understood her and made up my mind            
what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No,        
she is not stupid, she is an excellent girl," he sometimes said to          
himself "she never makes a mistake, never says anything stupid. She         
says little, but what she does say is always clear and simple, so           
she is not stupid. She never was abashed and is not abashed now, so         
she cannot be a bad woman!" He had often begun to make reflections          
or think aloud in her company, and she had always answered him              
either by a brief but appropriate remark- showing that it did not           
interest her- or by a silent look and smile which more palpably than        
anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in               
regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with that smile.          
  She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant           
for him alone, in which there was something more significant than in        
the general smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that        
everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line,        
and he knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an            
incomprehensible terror seized him at the thought of that dreadful          
step. A thousand times during that month and a half while he felt           
himself drawn nearer and nearer to that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to      
himself: "What am I doing? I need resolution. Can it be that I have         
none?"                                                                      
  He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this           
matter he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself        
and really possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when      
they feel themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was         
overpowered by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at      
Anna Pavlovna's, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire        
paralyzed his will.                                                         
                                                      {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  On Helene's name day, a small party of just their own people- as his      
wife said- met for supper at Prince Vasili's. All these friends and         
relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl      
would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.          
Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,      
was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the         
more important guests- an old general and his wife, and Anna                
Pavlovna Scherer. At the other end sat the younger and less                 
important guests, and there too sat the members of the family, and          
Pierre and Helene, side by side. Prince Vasili was not having any           
supper: he went round the table in a merry mood, sitting down now by        
one, now by another, of the guests. To each of them he made some            
careless and agreeable remark except to Pierre and Helene, whose            
presence he seemed not to notice. He enlivened the whole party. The         
wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal gleamed, so did         
the ladies' toilets and the gold and silver of the men's epaulets;          
servants in scarlet liveries moved round the table, the clatter of          
plates, knives, and glasses mingled with the animated hum of several        
conversations. At one end of the table, the old chamberlain was             
heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at           
which she laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the             
misfortunes of some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the center of the          
table, Prince Vasili attracted everybody's attention. With a facetious      
smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about last Wednesday's         
meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich                    
Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had           
received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander         
from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the Emperor said that he was      
receiving from all sides declarations of the people's loyalty, that         
the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that      
he was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would endeavor          
to be worthy of it. This rescript began with the words: "Sergey             
Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach me," etc.                             
  "Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked         
one of the ladies.                                                          
  "Exactly, not a hair's breadth farther," answered Prince Vasili,          
laughing, "'Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From all sides...           
Sergey Kuzmich...' Poor Vyazmitinov could not get any farther! He           
began the rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered 'Sergey'      
he sobbed, 'Kuz-mi-ch,' tears, and 'From all sides' was smothered in        
sobs and he could get no farther. And again his handkerchief, and           
again: 'Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides,'... and tears, till at last         
somebody else was asked to read it."                                        
  "Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated           
laughing.                                                                   
  "Don't be unkind," cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of the table          
holding up a threatening finger. "He is such a worthy and excellent         
man, our dear Vyazmitinov...."                                              
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where           
the honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and           
under the influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre        
and Helene sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the            
table, a suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that        
had nothing to do with Sergey Kuzmich- a smile of bashfulness at their      
own feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked,          
much as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however         
they avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant      
as they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances            
they gave that the story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the        
food were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company      
was directed to- Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing      
of Sergey Kuzmich and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his          
daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly           
said: "Yes... it's getting on, it will all be settled today." Anna          
Pavlovna threatened him on behalf of "our dear Vyazmitinov," and in         
her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read      
a congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter's             
happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to        
the old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and           
her sigh seemed to say: "Yes, there's nothing left for you and me           
but to sip sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these        
young ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy." "And what nonsense      
all this is that I am saying!" thought a diplomatist, glancing at           
the happy faces of the lovers. "That's happiness!"                          
  Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting        
that society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a          
healthy and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this          
human feeling dominated everything else and soared above all their          
affected chatter. Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the        
animation was evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the            
footmen waiting at table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their         
duties as they looked at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face         
and at the red, broad, and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It           
seemed as if the very light of the candles was focused on those two         
happy faces alone.                                                          
  Pierre felt that he the center of it all, and this both pleased           
and embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some            
occupation. He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only      
now and then detached ideas and impressions from the world of               
reality shot unexpectedly through his mind.                                 
  "So it is all finished!" he thought. "And how has it all happened?        
How quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself        
alone, but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They         
are all expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I           
cannot, I cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not             
know, but it will certainly happen!" thought Pierre, glancing at those      
dazzling shoulders close to his eyes.                                       
  Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it         
awkward to attract everyone's attention and to be considered a lucky        
man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris            
possessed of a Helen. "But no doubt it always is and must be so!" he        
consoled himself. "And besides, what have I done to bring it about?         
How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then           
there was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I            
played cards with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with         
her. How did it begin, when did it all come about?" And here he was         
sitting by her side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her          
nearness, her breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would           
suddenly seem to him that it was not she but he was so unusually            
beautiful, and that that was why they all looked so at him, and             
flattered by this general admiration he would expand his chest,             
raise his head, and rejoice at his good fortune. Suddenly he heard a        
familiar voice repeating something to him a second time. But Pierre         
was so absorbed that he did not understand what was said.                   
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  "I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated            
Prince Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear             
fellow."                                                                    
  Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling        
at him and Helene. "Well, what of it, if you all know it?" thought          
Pierre. "What of it? It's the truth!" and he himself smiled his gentle      
childlike smile, and Helene smiled too.                                     
  "When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?" repeated Prince        
Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a             
dispute.                                                                    
  "How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre.              
  "Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh.                             
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 20}
  After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the         
drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking             
leave of Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an              
important occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go      
away, refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a         
mournful silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity        
of his diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre's happiness. The         
old general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was.            
"Oh, the old fool," he thought. "That Princess Helene will be               
beautiful still when she's fifty."                                          
  "I think I may congratulate you," whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old      
princess, kissing her soundly. "If I hadn't this headache I'd have          
stayed longer."                                                             
  The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her      
daughter's happiness.                                                       
  While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a            
long time alone with Helene in the little drawing room where they were      
sitting. He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained           
alone with her, but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt            
that it was inevitable, but he could not make up his mind to take           
the final step. He felt ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone      
else's place here beside Helene. "This happiness is not for you," some      
inner voice whispered to him. "This happiness is for those who have         
not in them what there is in you."                                          
  But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether           
she was satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple           
manner that this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest           
she had ever had.                                                           
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 25}
  Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in      
the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to Pierre with languid        
footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasili          
gave him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just            
said was so strange that one could not take it in. But then the             
expression of severity changed, and he drew Pierre's hand downwards,        
made him sit down, and smiled affectionately.                               
  "Well, Lelya?" he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and            
addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural        
to parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which          
Prince Vasili had only acquired by imitating other parents.                 
  And he again turned to Pierre.                                            
  "Sergey Kuzmich- From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top            
button of his waistcoat.                                                    
  Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the           
story about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince Vasili just then,         
and Prince Vasili saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered           
something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince           
was disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the      
world touched Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed                
disconcerted, and her look seemed to say: "Well, it is your own             
fault."                                                                     
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 30}
  "The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!" thought Pierre, and      
he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey             
Kuzmich, asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it      
properly. Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it.          
  When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his        
wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.            
  "Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear..."      
  "Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady.                 
  Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat          
down on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and          
seemed to be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.      
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 35}
  "Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are about."           
  The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified           
and indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room.              
Pierre and Helene still sat talking just as before.                         
  "Still the same," she said to her husband.                                
  Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and        
his face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him.         
Shaking himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps      
went past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he      
went joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant            
that Pierre rose in alarm on seeing it.                                     
  "Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!-        
(He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)- "My      
dear boy... Lelya... I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I           
loved your father... and she will make you a good wife... God bless         
you!..."                                                                    
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 40}
  He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with      
his malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.                  
  "Princess, come here!" he shouted.                                        
  The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using        
her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful        
Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again.      
  "All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so      
it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because          
it's definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held      
the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom        
as it rose and fell.                                                        
  "Helene!" he said aloud and paused.                                       
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 45}
  "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.                                                                    
                                                     {BK3|CH2 ^paragraph 50}
-                                                                           
  *"I love you."                                                            
-                                                                           
  Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's           
large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as            
people said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions          
of money.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK3|CH3                                                                     
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from Prince Vasili        
in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying           
him a visit. "I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of              
course I shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see      
you at the same time, my honored benefactor," wrote Prince Vasili. "My      
son Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you        
will allow him personally to express the deep respect that,                 
emulating his father, he feels for you."                                    
  "It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors           
are coming to us of their own accord," incautiously remarked the            
little princess on hearing the news.                                        
  Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.                                
  A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one            
evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.             
  Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasili's            
character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and        
Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high position and honors. And          
now, from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little         
princess, he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion        
changed into a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever        
he mentioned him. On the day of Prince Vasili's arrival, Prince             
Bolkonski was particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether          
he was in a bad temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or whether         
his being in a bad temper made him specially annoyed at Prince              
Vasili's visit, he was in a bad temper, and in the morning Tikhon           
had already advised the architect not to go the prince with his             
report.                                                                     
                                                      {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  "Do you hear how he's walking?" said Tikhon, drawing the architect's      
attention to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on         
his heels- we know what that means...."                                     
  However, at nine o'clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable      
collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day          
before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the      
habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still         
visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of           
the soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince         
went through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and the               
outbuildings, frowning and silent.                                          
  "Can a sleigh pass?" he asked his overseer, a venerable man,              
resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him        
back to the house.                                                          
  "The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor."             
  The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be               
thanked," thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!"                 
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  "It would have been hard to drive up, your honor," he added. "I           
heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor."          
  The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,        
frowning.                                                                   
  "What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?" he said in his        
shrill, harsh voice. "The road is not swept for the princess my             
daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!"              
  "Your honor, I thought..."                                                
  "You thought!" shouted the prince, his words coming more and more         
rapidly and indistinctly. "You thought!... Rascals! Blackgaurds!...         
I'll teach you to think!" and lifting his stick he swung it and             
would have hit Alpatych, the overseer, had not the latter                   
instinctively avoided the blow. "Thought... Blackguards..." shouted         
the prince rapidly.                                                         
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding         
the stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly          
before him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he          
continued to shout: "Blackgaurds!... Throw the snow back on the road!"      
did not lift his stick again but hurried into the house.                    
  Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew         
that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle        
Bourienne with a radiant face that said: "I know nothing, I am the          
same as usual," and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with                
downcast eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such      
occasions she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could        
not. She thought: "If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not      
sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he            
will say (as he has done before) that I'm in the dumps."                    
  The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted.          
  "Fool... or dummy!" he muttered.                                          
  "And the other one is not here. They've been telling tales," he           
thought- referring to the little princess who was not in the dining         
room.                                                                       
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  "Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?"                              
  "She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a            
bright smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state."         
  "Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down.                              
  His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he        
flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little      
princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the           
prince that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to          
appear.                                                                     
  "I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:           
"Heaven knows what a fright might do."                                      
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 25}
  In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear,      
and with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not           
realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The              
prince reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his           
contempt for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to          
life at Bald Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle                
Bourienne, spent whole days with her, asked her to sleep in her             
room, and often talked with her about the old prince and criticized         
him.                                                                        
  "So we are to have visitors, mon prince?" remarked Mademoiselle           
Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. "His           
Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his son, I understand?" she            
said inquiringly.                                                           
  "Hm!- his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the      
service," said the prince disdainfully. "Why his son is coming I don't      
understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don't      
want him." (He looked at his blushing daughter.) "Are you unwell            
today? Eh? Afraid of the 'minister' as that idiot Alpatych called           
him this morning?"                                                          
  "No, mon pere."                                                           
  Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice      
of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the             
conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and         
after the soup the prince became more genial.                               
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 30}
  After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little              
princess was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her           
maid. She grew pale on seeing her father-in-law.                            
  She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her           
cheeks had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.             
  "Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the              
prince's question as to how she felt.                                       
  "Do you want anything?"                                                   
  "No, merci, mon pere."                                                    
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 35}
  "Well, all right, all right."                                             
  He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood        
with bowed head.                                                            
  "Has the snow been shoveled back?"                                        
  "Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only        
my stupidity."                                                              
  "All right, all right," interrupted the prince, and laughing his          
unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to kiss, and          
then proceeded to his study.                                                
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 40}
  Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by           
coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to      
one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.                  
  Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.            
  Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo              
before a table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly        
fixed his large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a          
continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to           
provide for him. And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and      
a rich and ugly heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought,        
turn out very well and amusingly. "And why not marry her if she really      
has so much money? That never does any harm," thought Anatole.              
  He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had        
become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his        
father's room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to him.      
Prince Vasili's two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked round      
with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter          
entered, as if to say: "Yes, that's how I want you to look."                
  "I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?" Anatole asked,        
as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been         
mentioned during the journey.                                               
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 45}
  "Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious      
with the old prince."                                                       
  "If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I can't          
bear those old men! Eh?"                                                    
  "Remember, for you everything depends on this."                           
  In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants' rooms         
that the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of            
both had been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in        
her room, vainly trying to master her agitation.                            
  "Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never          
happen!" she said, looking at herself in the glass. "How shall I enter      
the drawing room? Even if I like him I can't now be myself with             
him." The mere thought of her father's look filled her with terror.         
The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received         
from Masha, the lady's maid, the necessary report of how handsome           
the minister's son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and         
with what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while         
the son had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time.              
Having received this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle      
Bourienne, whose chattering voices had reached her from the                 
corridor, went into Princess Mary's room.                                   
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 50}
  "You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess, waddling        
in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.                                   
  She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the             
morning, but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully         
done and her face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its         
sunken and faded outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg          
society, it was still more noticeable how much plainer she had become.      
Some unobtrusive touch had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne's           
toilet which rendered her fresh and prettyface yet more attractive.         
  "What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?" she            
began. "They'll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing         
room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself      
up at all!"                                                                 
  The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and          
merrily began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary           
should be dressed. Princess Mary's self-esteem was wounded by the fact      
that the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both        
her companions' not having the least conception that it could be            
otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them      
would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to          
dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed,           
her beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it          
took on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as         
she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these        
women quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so             
plain that neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they           
began dressing her with perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm      
conviction women have that dress can make a face pretty.                    
  "No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty," said Lise, looking        
sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. "You have a maroon        
dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life        
may be at stake. But this one is too light, it's not becoming!"             
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 55}
  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.                                                              
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 60}
  "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."                 
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 65}
  "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.                                                   
                                                     {BK3|CH3 ^paragraph 70}
  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?                               
                                                                            
BK3|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his son were already      
in the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle        
Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her            
heels, the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little         
princess, indicating her to the gentlemen, said: "Voila Marie!"             
Princess Mary saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince           
Vasili's face, serious for an instant at the sight of her, but              
immediately smiling again, and the little princess curiously noting         
the impression "Marie" produced on the visitors. And she saw                
Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her            
unusually animated look which was fixed on him, but him she could           
not see, she only saw something large, brilliant, and handsome              
moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili approached         
first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her hand and         
answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she                  
remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still           
could not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and        
she touched with her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful        
light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was      
struck by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a            
button of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in,            
slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked        
with beaming face at the princess without speaking and evidently not        
thinking about her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready          
or eloquent in conversation, but he had the faculty, so invaluable          
in society, of composure and imperturbable self-possession. If a man        
lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and         
betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an           
anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was        
dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the princess' hair. It         
was evident that he could be silent in this way for a very long             
time. "If anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him talk, but         
I don't want to"' he seemed to say. Besides this, in his behavior to        
women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in them              
curiosity, awe, and even love- a supercilious consciousness of his own      
superiority. It was was as if he said to them: "I know you, I know          
you, but why should I bother about you? You'd be only too glad, of          
course." Perhaps he did not really think this when he met women-            
even probably he did not, for in general he thought very little- but        
his looks and manner gave that impression. The princess felt this, and      
as if wishing to show him that she did not even dare expect to              
interest him, she turned to his father. The conversation was general        
and animated, thanks to Princess Lise's voice and little downy lip          
that lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with that           
playful manner often employed by lively chatty people, and                  
consisting in the assumption that between the person they so address        
and themselves there are some semi-private, long-established jokes and      
amusing reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist- just      
as none existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone        
and the little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew,            
into these amusing recollections of things that had never occurred.         
Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt         
herself pleasantly made to share in these merry reminiscences.              
  "Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to           
ourselves, dear prince," said the little princess (of course, in            
French) to Prince Vasili. "It's not as at Annette's* receptions             
where you always ran away; you remember cette chere Annette!"               
-                                                                           
  *Anna Pavlovna.                                                           
-                                                                           
                                                      {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  "Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!"                     
  "And our little tea table?"                                               
  "Oh, yes!"                                                                
  "Why is it you were never at Annette's?" the little princess asked        
Anatole. "Ah, I know, I know," she said with a sly glance, "your            
brother Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!" and she shook her      
finger at him, "I have even heard of your doings in Paris!"                 
  "And didn't Hippolyte tell you?" asked Prince Vasili, turning to his      
son and seizing the little princess' arm as if she would have run away      
and he had just managed to catch her, "didn't he tell you how he            
himself was pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the        
door? Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess," he added, turning          
to Princess Mary.                                                           
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                              
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and               
considering what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed         
him. "What are Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince              
Vasili is a shallow braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine               
specimen," he grumbled to himself. What angered him was that the            
coming of these visitors revived in his mind an unsettled question          
he always tried to stifle, one about which he always deceived himself.      
The question was whether he could ever bring himself to part from           
his daughter and give her to a husband. The prince never directly           
asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that he would have          
to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his feelings         
but with the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Mary,          
little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him. "And why          
should she marry?" he thought. "To be unhappy for certain. There's          
Lise, married to Andrew- a better husband one would think could hardly      
be found nowadays- but is she contented with her lot? And who would         
marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They'll take her for her           
connections and wealth. Are there no women living unmarried, and            
even the happier for it?" So thought Prince Bolkonski while                 
dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off demanded an        
immediate answer. Prince Vasili had brought his son with the evident        
intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask         
for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad.              
"Well, I've nothing against it," the prince said to himself, "but he        
must be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see."                      
  "That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he added          
aloud.                                                                      
  He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing           
rapidly round the company. He noticed the change in the little              
princess' dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, Princess Mary's           
unbecoming coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne's and Anatole's smiles,         
and the loneliness of his daughter amid the general conversation. "Got      
herself up like a fool!" he thought, looking irritably at her. "She is      
shameless, and he ignores her!"                                             
  He went straight up to Prince Vasili.                                     
  "Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!"                        
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  "Friendship laughs at distance," began Prince Vasili in his usual         
rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. "Here is my second son; please        
love and befriend him."                                                     
  Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.                                        
  "Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well, come and          
kiss me," and he offered his cheek.                                         
  Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and          
perfect composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his          
father had told him to expect.                                              
  Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the         
sofa and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it           
and began questioning him about political affairs and news. He              
seemed to listen attentively to what Prince Vasili said, but kept           
glancing at Princess Mary.                                                  
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  "And so they are writing from Potsdam already?" he said, repeating        
Prince Vasili's last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his         
daughter.                                                                   
  "Is it for visitors you've got yourself up like that, eh?" said           
he. "Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for        
the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you         
are never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent."          
  "It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess, with         
a blush.                                                                    
  "You must do as you please," said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his         
daughter-in-law, "but she need not make a fool of herself, she's plain      
enough as it is."                                                           
  And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who      
was reduced to tears.                                                       
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  "On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,"            
said Prince Vasili.                                                         
  "Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince Bolkonski,         
turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get acquainted."            
  "Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile          
beside the old prince.                                                      
  "Well, my dear boy, I hear you've been educated abroad, not taught        
to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me,      
my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?" asked the old            
man, scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.                             
  "No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly able      
to restrain his laughter.                                                   
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 35}
  "Ah! That's a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the          
Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve.         
Well, are you off to the front?"                                            
  "No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am                 
attached... what is it I am attached to, Papa?" said Anatole,               
turning to his father with a laugh.                                         
  "A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha, ha!"      
laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly        
Prince Bolkonski frowned.                                                   
  "You may go," he said to Anatole.                                         
  Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.                                   
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 40}
  "And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't you?"      
said the old prince to Prince Vasili.                                       
  "I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education          
there is much better than ours."                                            
  "Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The        
lad's a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now." He took        
Prince Vasili's arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were          
alone together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the         
old prince.                                                                 
  "Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can't part from           
her?" said the old prince angrily. "What an idea! I'm ready for it          
tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better.        
You know my principles- everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow      
in your presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can            
stay and I'll see." The old prince snorted. "Let her marry, it's all        
the same to me!" he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting      
from his son.                                                               
  "I will tell you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a            
crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so               
keen-sighted companion. "You know, you see right through people.            
Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an              
excellent son or kinsman."                                                  
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 45}
  "All right, all right, we'll see!"                                        
  As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of          
time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women      
of Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real      
till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing                
immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have         
been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full      
of significance.                                                            
  Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The        
handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband              
absorbed all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave,                   
determined, manly, and magnanimous. She felt convinced of that.             
Thousands of dreams of a future family life continually rose in her         
imagination. She drove them away and tried to conceal them.                 
  "But am I not too cold with him?" thought the princess. "I try to be      
reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him             
already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine        
that I do not like him."                                                    
  And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to           
her new guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole.           
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 50}
  Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole's      
arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young           
woman without any definite position, without relations or even a            
country, did not intend to devote her life to serving Prince                
Bolkonski, to reading aloud to him and being friends with Princess          
Mary. Mademoiselle Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian            
prince who, able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the           
plain, badly dressed, ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in            
love with her and carry her off; and here at last was a Russian             
prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew a story, heard from her aunt but        
finished in her own way, which she liked to repeat to herself. It           
was the story of a girl who had been seduced, and to whom her poor          
mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a      
man without being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched to      
tears as in imagination she told this story to him, her seducer. And        
now he, a real Russian prince, had appeared. He would carry her away        
and then sa pauvre mere would appear and he would marry her. So her         
future shaped itself in Mademoiselle Bourienne's head at the very time      
she was talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that         
guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what she should          
do), but all this had long been familiar to her, and now that               
Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around him and she              
wished and tried to please him as much as possible.                         
  The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,        
unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the          
familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any             
struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.                           
  Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man      
tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the          
spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was         
beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle               
Bourienne that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him        
with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless      
actions.                                                                    
  After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess            
Mary was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in          
high spirits, came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside          
Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully        
joyous emotion. Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately         
poetic world and the look she felt upon her made that world still more      
poetic. But Anatole's expression, though his eyes were fixed on her,        
referred not to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne's        
little foot, which he was then touching with his own under the              
clavichord. Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess             
Mary, and in her lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and            
hope that was also new to the princess.                                     
  "How she loves me!" thought Princess Mary. "How happy I am now,           
and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband?      
Can it be possible?" she thought, not daring to look at his face,           
but still feeling his eyes gazing at her.                                   
                                                     {BK3|CH4 ^paragraph 55}
  In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole      
kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the             
courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came          
near to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up        
and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but      
then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!)                  
Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened          
look.                                                                       
  "What delicacy! " thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie"      
(Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not         
value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and        
kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand.       
  "No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are              
behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!" she          
said. And smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.             
                                                                            
BK3|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as        
he got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.                     
  "Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind- yes,        
kind, that is the chief thing," thought Princess Mary; and fear, which      
she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round,        
it seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen          
in the dark corner. And this someone was he- the devil- and he was          
also this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.        
  She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.                 
  Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a          
long time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at            
someone, now working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of        
her pauvre mere rebuking her for her fall.                                  
  The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly           
made. She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every            
position was awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her        
now more than ever because Anatole's presence had vividly recalled          
to her the time when she was not like that and when everything was          
light and gay. She sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and            
nightcap and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy        
feather bed for the third time, muttering to herself.                       
                                                      {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  "I told you it was all lumps and holes!" the little princess              
repeated. "I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it's not my           
fault!" and her voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.           
  The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard           
him pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though        
he had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more          
pointed because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter,         
whom he loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would      
consider the whole matter and decide what was right and how he              
should act, but instead of that he only excited himself more and more.      
  "The first man that turns up- she forgets her father and                  
everything else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her            
tail and is unlike herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she          
knew I should notice it. Fr... fr... fr! And don't I see that that          
idiot had eyes only for Bourienne- I shall have to get rid of her. And      
how is it she has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride           
for herself she might at least have some for my sake! She must be           
shown that the blockhead thinks nothing of her and looks only at            
Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but I'll let her see...."                
  The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a         
mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,        
Princess Mary's self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to          
be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this         
thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.                             
  "What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting      
the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. "I         
never invited them. They came to disturb my life- and there is not          
much of it left."                                                           
                                                     {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered by        
the shirt.                                                                  
  Tikhon knew his master's habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and           
therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive                  
expression of the face that emerged from the shirt.                         
  "Gone to bed?" asked the prince.                                          
  Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of         
his master's thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince      
Vasili and his son.                                                         
  "They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency."        
                                                     {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  "No good... no good..." said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his        
feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing        
gown, he went to the couch on which he slept.                               
  Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle               
Bourienne, they quite understood one another as to the first part of        
their romance, up to the appearance of the pauvre mere; they                
understood that they had much to say to one another in private and          
so they had been seeking an opportunity since morning to meet one           
another alone. When Princess Mary went to her father's room at the          
usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and Anatole met in the                   
conservatory.                                                               
  Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special                  
trepidation. It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that         
her fate would be decided that day, but that they also knew what she        
thought about it. She read this in Tikhon's face and in that of Prince      
Vasili's valet, who made her a low bow when she met him in the              
corridor carrying hot water.                                                
  The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of      
his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking         
expression of her father's. His face wore that expression when his dry      
hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in              
arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,         
repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.                 
  He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.                 
                                                     {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  "I have had a proposition made me concerning you," he said with an        
unnatural smile. "I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasili has not      
come and brought his pupil with him" (for some reason Prince Bolkonski      
referred to Anatole as a "pupil") "for the sake of my beautiful             
eyes. Last night a proposition was made me on your account and, as you      
know my principles, I refer it to you."                                     
  "How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess, growing        
pale and then blushing.                                                     
  "How understand me!" cried her father angrily. "Prince Vasili             
finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to         
you on his pupil's behalf. That's how it's to be understood! 'How           
understand it'!... And I ask you!"                                          
  "I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess.           
  "I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I'm not going to         
get married. What about you? That's what I want to know."                   
                                                     {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  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!"                                              
                                                     {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 30}
  "There's no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry           
you or anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room,             
think it over, and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence:        
yes or no. I know you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but        
you had better think it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" he      
still shouted when the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already           
staggered out of the study.                                                 
  Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had         
said about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be         
sure, but still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of         
it. She was going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing      
nor hearing anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of            
Mademoiselle Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps      
away saw Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to      
her. With a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole              
looked at Princess Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the          
waist of Mademoiselle Bourienne who had not yet seen her.                   
  "Who's that? Why? Wait a moment!" Anatole's face seemed to say.           
Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand           
it. At last Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole      
bowed to Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in      
a laugh at this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders          
went to the door that led to his own apartments.                            
  An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the old               
prince; he added that Prince Vasili was also there. When Tikhon came        
to her Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding           
the weeping Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her      
hair. The princess' beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance      
were looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle                 
Bourienne's pretty face.                                                    
  "No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said                  
Mademoiselle Bourienne.                                                     
                                                     {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 35}
  "Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and I will         
try to do all I can for your happiness."                                    
  "But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand             
being so carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..."               
  "I quite understand," answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile.           
"Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my father," she said, and went        
out.                                                                        
  Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other and a              
snuffbox in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion        
on his face, as if stirred to his heart's core and himself                  
regretting and laughing at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary          
entered. He hurriedly took a pinch of snuff.                                
  "Ah, my dear, my dear!" he began, rising and taking her by both           
hands. Then, sighing, he added: "My son's fate is in your hands.            
Decide, my dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a          
daughter!"                                                                  
                                                     {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 40}
  He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.                         
  "Fr... fr..." snorted Prince Bolkonski. "The prince is making a           
proposition to you in his pupil's- I mean, his son's- name. Do you          
wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin's wife? Reply: yes or no," he      
shouted, "and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion also.      
Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion," added Prince Bolkonski, turning      
to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look. "Yes, or no?"            
  "My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my            
life from yours. I don't wish to marry," she answered positively,           
glancing at Prince Vasili and at her father with her beautiful eyes.        
  "Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!" cried Prince                  
Bolkonski, frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss         
her, but only bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and             
pressed her hand so that she winced and uttered a cry.                      
  Prince Vasili rose.                                                       
                                                     {BK3|CH5 ^paragraph 45}
  "My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never      
forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching        
this heart, so kind and generous? Say 'perhaps'... The future is so         
long. Say 'perhaps.'"                                                       
  "Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you        
for the honor, but I shall never be your son's wife."                       
  "Well, so that's finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have         
seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!" said the         
old prince. "Very, very glad to glad to have seen you," repeated he,        
embracing Prince Vasili.                                                    
  "My vocation is a different one," thought Princess Mary. "My              
vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the                 
happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will          
arrange poor Amelie's happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so      
passionately repents. I will do all I can to arrange the match between      
them. If he is not rich I will give her the means; I will ask my            
father and Andrew. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so      
unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how                  
passionately she must love him if she could so far forget herself!          
Perhaps I might have done the same!..." thought Princess Mary.              
                                                                            
BK3|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till              
midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's      
handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm        
and haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read      
the letter.                                                                 
  Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the           
house, on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the         
room and found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing          
at the same time.                                                           
  Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still        
living with the Rostovs.                                                    
  "My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry,                
prepared to sympathize in any way.                                          
  The count sobbed yet more.                                                
                                                      {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  "Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling           
boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How        
tell the little countess!"                                                  
  Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief           
wiped the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried        
her own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and        
till teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's      
help, would inform her.                                                     
  At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war            
news and about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been         
received from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that          
they might very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each          
time that these hints began to make the countess anxious and she            
glanced uneasily at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very      
adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha,         
who, of the whole family, was the most gifted with a capacity to            
feel any shades of intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her         
ears from the beginning of the meal and was certain that there was          
some secret between her father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had            
something to do with her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was             
preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew how               
sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikolenka, did not         
venture to ask any questions at dinner, but she was too excited to eat      
anything and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless of her            
governess' remarks. After dinner, she rushed head long after Anna           
Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on her neck as soon          
as she overtook her in the sitting room.                                    
  "Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!"                                 
  "Nothing, my dear."                                                       
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up- I know you know          
something."                                                                 
  Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.                                          
  "You are a little slyboots," she said.                                    
  "A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha,             
reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face.                            
  "But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your          
mamma."                                                                     
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  "I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at      
once."                                                                      
  Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the            
letter, on condition that she should tell no one.                           
  "No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha,crossing herself, "I         
won't tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya.                       
  "Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful              
triumph.                                                                    
  "Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.                  
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother's wound produced        
on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.           
  She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.                        
  "A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he      
wrote himself," said she through her tears.                                 
  "There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked         
Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very          
glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself           
so. You are all blubberers and understand nothing."                         
  Natasha smiled through her tears.                                         
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  "You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya.                               
  "No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an               
officer."                                                                   
  "Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived      
you. Let us go to Mamma."                                                   
  Petya paced the room in silence for a time.                               
  "If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of        
those Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have            
killed so many that there'd have been a heap of them."                      
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 30}
  "Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!"                          
  "I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya.        
  "Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's           
silence.                                                                    
  Sonya smiled.                                                             
  "Do I remember Nicholas?"                                                 
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 35}
  "No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him                  
perfectly, remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive           
gesture, evidently wishing to give her words a very definite                
meaning. "I remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said.         
"But I don't remember Boris. I don't remember him a bit."                   
  "What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise.                
  "It's not that I don't remember- I know what he is like, but not          
as I remember Nikolenka. Him- I just shut my eyes and remember, but         
Boris... No!" (She shut her eyes.)"No! there's nothing at all."             
  "Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her      
friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to      
say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was      
out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and,      
whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him          
as long as I live."                                                         
  Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and          
said nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there        
was such love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt        
anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.      
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 40}
  "Shall you write to him?" she asked.                                      
  Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas,        
and whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already      
an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of           
herself and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had             
taken on himself?                                                           
  "I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said,         
blushing.                                                                   
  "And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?"                             
  Sonya smiled.                                                             
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 45}
  "No."                                                                     
  "And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to."            
  "Why should you be ashamed?"                                              
  "Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed."             
  "And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's      
previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in         
spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new             
Count Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant          
Natasha's Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!"              
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 50}
  "Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha.                                   
  "Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya,          
with the air of an old brigadier.                                           
  The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at             
dinner. On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her            
eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a               
snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna,      
with the letter, came on tiptoe to the countess' door and paused.           
  "Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her.         
"Come later." And she went in, closing the door behind her.                 
  The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.                        
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 55}
  At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna              
Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then                
silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then          
footsteps. Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud        
expression of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation        
and admits the public to appreciate his skill.                              
  "It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the         
countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait        
and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her           
lips.                                                                       
  When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him,                
embraced his bald head, over which she again looked at the letter           
and the portrait, and in order to press them again to her lips, she         
slightly pushed away the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya         
now entered the room, and the reading of the letter began. After a          
brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he           
had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his         
father's and mother's hands asking for their blessing, and that he          
kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya. Besides that, he sent greetings to         
Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them        
to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just the          
same as ever." When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came         
into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran            
away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her         
dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped          
down on the floor. The countess was crying.                                 
  "Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one            
should be glad and not cry."                                                
  This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked      
at her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the          
countess.                                                                   
                                                     {BK3|CH6 ^paragraph 60}
  Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were      
considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she           
did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses,           
and Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the          
letter each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it         
fresh proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary,        
how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of      
whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son         
about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count,          
that son who had first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that        
this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange                  
surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man's work of his          
own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages,            
showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to              
manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son's growth toward            
manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her          
as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up      
in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the      
little creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever cry,         
suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that      
that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son        
and officer that, judging by this letter, he now was.                       
  "What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the        
descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about          
himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he              
himself, I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about      
his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has            
remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was      
only so high- I always said...."                                            
  For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of        
letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied          
out, while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of      
the count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and               
equipment of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna            
Mikhaylovna, practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor        
with army authorities to secure advantageous means of communication         
for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her               
letters to the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the          
Guards. The Rostovs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was           
quite a definite address, and that if a letter reached the Grand            
Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason why it should not         
reach the Pavlograd regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the         
same neighborhood. And so it was decided to send the letters and money      
by the Grand Duke's courier to Boris and Boris was to forward them          
to Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess, Petya,      
Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles        
for his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his son.      
                                                                            
BK3|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov's active army, in camp before         
Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors- the      
Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia,             
spent the night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to come         
straight to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o'clock.        
  That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris, telling him        
that the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles            
from Olmutz and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money      
for him. Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops,      
after their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp         
swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all        
sorts of tempting wares. The Pavlograds held feast after feast,             
celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made             
expeditions to Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who        
had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses.            
Rostov, who had just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought      
Denisov's horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and        
the sutlers. On receiving Boris' letter he rode with a fellow               
officer to Olmutz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set        
off alone to the Guards' camp to find his old playmate. Rostov had not      
yet had time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket,           
decorated with a soldier's cross, equally shabby cadet's riding             
breeches lined with worn leather, and an officer's saber with a             
sword knot. The Don horse he was riding was one he had bought from a        
Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled hussar cap stuck        
jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode up to the camp he         
thought how he would impress Boris and all his comrades of the              
Guards by his appearance- that of a fighting hussar who had been under      
fire.                                                                       
  The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip,           
parading their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy            
stages, their knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian                 
authorities had provided excellent dinners for the officers at every        
halting place. The regiments had entered and left the town with             
their bands playing, and by the Grand Duke's orders the men had             
marched all the way in step (a practice on which the Guards prided          
themselves), the officers on foot and at their proper posts. Boris had      
been quartered, and had marched all the way, with Berg who was already      
in command of a company. Berg, who had obtained his captaincy during        
the campaign, had gained the confidence of his superiors by his             
promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money matters very            
satisfactorily. Boris, during the campaign, had made the                    
acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by a        
letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become              
acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom he hoped to           
obtain a post on the commander in chief's staff. Berg and Boris,            
having rested after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and              
neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to          
them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees.            
Boris, in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a            
little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while            
awaiting Berg's move, and watched his opponent's face, evidently            
thinking about the game as he always thought only of whatever he was        
engaged on.                                                                 
  "Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked.                
  "We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing           
his hand.                                                                   
                                                      {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  At that moment the door opened.                                           
  "Here he is at last!" shouted Rostov. "And Berg too! Oh, you              
petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!" he exclaimed, imitating his Russian      
nurse's French, at which he and Boris used to laugh long ago.               
  "Dear me, how you have changed!"                                          
  Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit to steady         
and replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace        
his friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of         
youth, that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a         
manner different from that of its elders which is often insincere,          
Nicholas wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He           
wanted to pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss him- a thing            
everybody did. But notwithstanding this, Boris embraced him in a            
quiet, friendly way and kissed him three times.                             
  They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when        
young men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense           
changes in the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which        
they had taken those first steps. Both had changed greatly since            
they last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had         
taken place in them.                                                        
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete,      
not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger        
and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his         
own mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's         
loud voice, popped her head in at the door.                                 
  "Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink.                                
  "Why do you shout so? You'll frighten them!" said Boris. "I did           
not expect you today," he added. "I only sent you the note yesterday        
by Bolkonski- an adjutant of Kutuzov's, who's a friend of mine. I           
did not think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you?      
Been under fire already?" asked Boris.                                      
  Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier's Cross of St. George         
fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,      
glanced at Berg with a smile.                                               
  "As you see," he said.                                                    
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "Indeed? Yes, yes!" said Boris, with a smile. "And we too have had a      
splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode        
with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and every      
advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I      
can't tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our              
officers."                                                                  
  And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of           
his hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the           
pleasures and advantages of service under members of the Imperial           
family.                                                                     
  "Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some wine."               
  Boris made a grimace.                                                     
  "If you really want it," said he.                                         
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and         
sent for wine.                                                              
  "Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he added.          
  Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both      
arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he          
glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind        
the letter.                                                                 
  "Well, they've sent you a tidy sum," said Berg, eying the heavy           
purse that sank into the sofa. "As for us, Count, we get along on           
our pay. I can tell you for myself..."                                      
  "I say, Berg, my dear fellow," said Rostov, "when you get a letter        
from home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk             
everything over with, and I happen to be there, I'll go at once, to be      
out of your way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!" he             
exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking          
amiably into his face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his      
words, he added, "Don't be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from      
my heart as to an old acquaintance."                                        
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  "Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg,             
getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.                    
  "Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris.                  
  Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of             
dust, stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples      
upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having          
assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had          
been noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.                          
  "Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the             
letter.                                                                     
  "Why?"                                                                    
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 30}
  "Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them          
such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!" he repeated, flushing suddenly.        
"Well, have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let's have            
some!"                                                                      
  In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of                   
recommendation to Bagration which the old countess at Anna                  
Mikhaylovna's advice had obtained through an acquaintance and sent          
to her son, asking him to take it to its destination and make use of        
it.                                                                         
  "What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the letter         
under the table.                                                            
  "Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris.                             
  "It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want          
it for!"                                                                    
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 35}
  "Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading the         
address. "This letter would be of great use to you."                        
  "I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant."                       
  "Why not?" inquired Boris.                                                
  "It's a lackey's job!"                                                    
  "You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris, shaking his      
head.                                                                       
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 40}
  "And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the                
point... Come, how are you?" asked Rostov.                                  
  "Well, as you see. So far everything's all right, but I confess I         
should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front."            
  "Why?"                                                                    
  "Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try        
to make as successful a career of it as possible."                          
  "Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else.       
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 45}
  He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently      
trying in vain to find the answer to some question.                         
  Old Gabriel brought in the wine.                                          
  "Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would drink            
with you. I can't."                                                         
  "Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?"           
asked Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.                                    
  "He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow," answered          
Boris.                                                                      
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 50}
  Again Rostov looked intently into Boris' eyes and sighed. Berg            
returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three        
officers became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and      
how they had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They          
spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke,         
and told stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual,          
kept silent when the subject did not relate to himself, but in              
connection with the stories of the Grand Duke's quick temper he             
related with gusto how in Galicia he had managed to deal with the           
Grand Duke when the latter made a tour of the regiments and was             
annoyed at the irregularity of a movement. With a pleasant smile            
Berg related how the Grand Duke had ridden up to him in a violent           
passion, shouting: "Arnauts!" ("Arnauts" was the Tsarevich's                
favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for the               
company commander.                                                          
  "Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I         
knew I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know         
the Army Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do           
the Lord's Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my           
company, and so my conscience was at ease. I came forward...." (Berg        
stood up and showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his          
cap, and really it would have been difficult for a face to express          
greater respect and self-complacency than his did.) "Well, he               
stormed at me, as the saying is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It        
was not a matter of life but rather of death, as the saying is.             
'Albanians!' and 'devils!' and 'To Siberia!'" said Berg with a              
sagacious smile. "I knew I was in the right so I kept silent; was           
not that best, Count?... 'Hey, are you dumb?' he shouted. Still I           
remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The next day it was not      
even mentioned in the Orders of the Day. That's what keeping one's          
head means. That's the way, Count," said Berg, lighting his pipe and        
emitting rings of smoke.                                                    
  "Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling.                               
  But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and          
skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and           
where he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about      
it, and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of        
his Schon Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a            
battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to          
have been, as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds         
well, but not at all as it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man      
and would on no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story      
meaning to tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly,          
involuntarily, and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told      
the truth to his hearers- who like himself had often heard stories          
of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an attack was and         
were expecting to hear just such a story- they would either not have        
believed him or, still worse, would have thought that Rostov was            
himself to blame since what generally happens to the narrators of           
cavalry attacks had not happened to him. He could not tell them simply      
that everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and             
sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a Frenchman          
into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as it really happened, it        
would have been necessary to make an effort of will to tell only            
what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young            
people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story of how        
beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like a          
storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his        
saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And          
so he told them all that.                                                   
  In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: "You cannot            
imagine what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack,"            
Prince Andrew, whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince           
Andrew, who liked to help young men, was flattered by being asked           
for his assistance and being well disposed toward Boris, who had            
managed to please him the day before, he wished to do what the young        
man wanted. Having been sent with papers from Kutuzov to the                
Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris, hoping to find him alone. When he         
came in and saw an hussar of the line recounting his military exploits      
(Prince Andrew could not endure that sort of man), he gave Boris a          
pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed eyes he looked at               
Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly on the           
sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company.              
Rostov flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a         
mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he too              
seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line.                                   
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 55}
  In spite of Prince Andrew's disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of      
the contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of             
view, regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the          
newcomer was evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and              
became silent. Boris inquired what news there might be on the staff,        
and what, without indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.              
  "We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently                 
reluctant to say more in the presence of a stranger.                        
  Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as      
was rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies         
would be doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that          
he could give no opinion on such an important government order, and         
Berg laughed gaily.                                                         
  "As to your business," Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris,         
"we will talk of it later" (and he looked round at Rostov). "Come to        
me after the review and we will do what is possible."                       
  And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to               
Rostov, whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now             
changing to anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: "I             
think you were talking of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?"        
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 60}
  "I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult the         
aide-de-camp.                                                               
  Bolkonski noticed the hussar's state of mind, and it amused him.          
With a slightly contemptuous smile, he said: "Yes, there are many           
stories now told about that affair!"                                        
  "Yes, stories!" repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes suddenly        
grown furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski. "Yes, many stories! But      
our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy's          
fire! Our stories have some weight, not like the stories of those           
fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing anything!"               
  "Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a quiet      
and particularly amiable smile.                                             
  A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this             
man's self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul.              
                                                     {BK3|CH7 ^paragraph 65}
  "I am not talking about you," he said, "I don't know you and,             
frankly, I don't want to. I am speaking of the staff in general."           
  "And I will tell you this," Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of        
quiet authority, "you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree            
with you that it would be very easy to do so if you haven't sufficient      
self-respect, but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen.      
In a day or two we shall all have to take part in a greater and more        
serious duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend of      
yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to            
displease you. However," he added rising, "you know my name and             
where to find me, but don't forget that I do not regard either              
myself or you as having been at all insulted, and as a man older            
than you, my advice is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday         
after the review I shall expect you, Drubetskoy. Au revoir!" exclaimed      
Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both he went out.                     
  Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think of what he ought        
to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it.      
He ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode        
home. Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that              
affected adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question          
that worried him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he         
would have at seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud           
man when covered by his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of      
all the men he knew there was none he would so much like to have for a      
friend as that very adjutant whom he so hated.                              
                                                                            
BK3|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was held of the      
Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia         
and those who had been campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors,         
the Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the          
Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.                 
  From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move,               
forming up on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and      
bayonets moved and halted at the officers' command, turned with             
banners flying, formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other             
similar masses of infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the         
rhythmic beat of hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red,      
and green braided uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front          
mounted on black, roan, or gray horses; then again, spreading out with      
the brazen clatter of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the      
gun carriages and with the smell of linstocks, came the artillery           
which crawled between the infantry and cavalry and took up its              
appointed position. Not only the generals in full parade uniforms,          
with their thin or thick waists drawn in to the utmost, their red           
necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and wearing scarves and all        
their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded officers, but every        
soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and his weapons             
clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed till its          
coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay smooth-         
felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and solemn        
affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own            
insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and         
yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that        
enormous whole.                                                             
  From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by      
ten o'clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were             
drown up on the vast field. The whole army was extended in three            
lines: the cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind            
that again the infantry.                                                    
  A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The      
three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov's              
fighting army (with the Pavlograds on the right flank of the front);        
those recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the        
line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines,        
under one command, and in a like order.                                     
  Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: "They're coming!            
They're coming!" Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final             
preparation swept over all the troops.                                      
                                                      {BK3|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen           
approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light          
gust of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on        
the lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their               
staffs. It looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was           
expressing its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was           
heard shouting: "Eyes front!" Then, like the crowing of cocks at            
sunrise, this was repeated by others from various sides and all became      
silent.                                                                     
  In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard.            
This was the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank,           
and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general           
march. It seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as          
if the army itself, rejoicing at the Emperors' approach, had naturally      
burst into music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of      
the Emperor Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of               
greeting, and the first regiment roared "Hurrah!" so deafeningly,           
continuously, and joyfully that the men themselves were awed by             
their multitude and the immensity of the power they constituted.            
  Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov's army which the Tsar      
approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in        
that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of        
might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this         
triumph.                                                                    
  He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass            
(and he himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and      
water, commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and          
so he could not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence      
of that word.                                                               
  "Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" thundered from all sides, one regiment          
after another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and          
then "Hurrah!"... Then the general march, and again "Hurrah!                
Hurrah!" growing ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening      
roar.                                                                       
                                                     {BK3|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and                
immobility seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it        
became alive, its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along          
which he had already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar        
of those voices, amid the square masses of troops standing                  
motionless as if turned to stone, hundreds of riders composing the          
suites moved carelessly but symmetrically and above all freely, and in      
front of them two men- the Emperors. Upon them the undivided,               
tensely passionate attention of that whole mass of men was                  
concentrated.                                                               
  The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse         
Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his        
pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone's      
attention.                                                                  
  Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight           
had recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within        
twenty paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of        
his handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling tenderness         
and ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every        
movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting.                            
  Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in           
French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.                                  
  Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself and felt a         
still stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show            
that love in some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready        
to cry. The Tsar called the colonel of the regiment and said a few          
words to him.                                                               
                                                     {BK3|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?"             
thought Rostov. "I should die of happiness!"                                
  The Tsar addressed the officers also: "I thank you all, gentlemen, I      
thank you with my whole heart." To Rostov every word sounded like a         
voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!      
  "You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of         
them."                                                                      
  "Oh, to die, to die for him " thought Rostov.                             
  The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the           
soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!"                          
                                                     {BK3|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all           
his might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout,      
if only to express his rapture fully.                                       
  The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if              
undecided.                                                                  
  "How can the Emperor be undecided?" thought Rostov, but then even         
this indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like               
everything else the Tsar did.                                               
  That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar's foot, in the           
narrow pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the              
bobtailed bay mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up           
the reins, and he moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying           
sea of aides-de-camp. Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at         
other regiments, till at last only his white plumes were visible to         
Rostov from amid the suites that surrounded the Emperors.                   
  Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonski,               
sitting his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their          
quarrel of yesterday and the question presented itself whether he           
ought or ought not to challenge Bolkonski. "Of course not!" he now          
thought. "Is it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment?          
At a time of such love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do      
any of our quarrels and affronts matter? I love and forgive                 
everybody now."                                                             
                                                     {BK3|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops          
began a ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently          
purchased from Denisov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron-         
that is, alone and in full view of the Emperor.                             
  Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman,               
spurred Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in         
which the animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to           
his chest, his tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the          
Emperor's eye upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a          
high and graceful action, as if flying through the air without              
touching the ground.                                                        
  Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and           
feeling himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a            
frowning but blissful face "like a vewy devil," as Denisov expressed        
it.                                                                         
  "Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor.                     
  "My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the          
fire this instant!" thought Rostov.                                         
                                                     {BK3|CH8 ^paragraph 30}
  When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also            
Kutuzov's, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards,          
about the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about            
Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if           
the Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side.                          
  But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander.      
His every word and movement was described with ecstasy.                     
  They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against         
the enemy under the Emperor's command. Commanded by the Emperor             
himself they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might:        
so thought Rostov and most of the officers after the review.                
  All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two           
battles would have made them.                                               
                                                                            
BK3|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and with his         
comrade Berg's best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see               
Bolkonski, wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for             
himself the best post he could- preferably that of adjutant to some         
important personage, a position in the army which seemed to him most        
attractive. "It is all very well for Rostov, whose father sends him         
ten thousand rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe          
to anybody and not be anyone's lackey, but I who have nothing but my        
brains have to make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must      
avail myself of them!" he reflected.                                        
  He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but the appearance      
of the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were            
stationed and the two Emperors were living with their suites,               
households, and courts only strengthened his desire to belong to            
that higher world.                                                          
  He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman's uniform, all these      
exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages        
with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military         
men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the      
Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be        
aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief,          
Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even        
the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a      
great many officers like him were always coming there and that              
everybody was heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather            
because of it, next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to         
Olmutz and, entering the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for               
Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and Boris was shown into a large            
hall probably formerly used for dancing, but in which five beds now         
stood, and furniture of various kinds: a table, chairs, and a               
clavichord. One adjutant, nearest the door, was sitting at the table        
in a Persian dressing gown, writing. Another, the red, stout                
Nesvitski, lay on a bed with his arms under his head, laughing with an      
officer who had sat down beside him. A third was playing a Viennese         
waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on the clavichord, sang      
the tune. Bolkonski was not there. None of these gentlemen changed his      
position on seeing Boris. The one who was writing and whom Boris            
addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkonski was on duty           
and that he should go through the door on the left into the                 
reception room if he wished to see him. Boris thanked him and went          
to the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.       
  When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously          
(with that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says,      
"If it were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment"), was         
listening to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very        
erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier's obsequious expression on his      
purple face, reporting something.                                           
  "Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to           
the general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he             
affected when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris,        
Prince Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him         
imploring him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with         
a cheerful smile.                                                           
                                                      {BK3|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised,        
that in the army, besides the subordination and discipline                  
prescribed in the military code, which he and the others knew in the        
regiment, there was another, more important, subordination, which made      
this tight-laced, purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain      
Prince Andrew, for his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant          
Drubetskoy. More than ever was Boris resolved to serve in future not        
according to the written code, but under this unwritten law. He felt        
now that merely by having been recommended to Prince Andrew he had          
already risen above the general who at the front had the power to           
annihilate him, a lieutenant of the Guards. Prince Andrew came up to        
him and took his hand.                                                      
  "I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing          
about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the            
dispositions. When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to          
it!"                                                                        
  Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to      
as something generally known. But it the first time he had heard            
Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions."                          
  "Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have        
been thinking about you."                                                   
  "Yes, I was thinking"- for some reason Boris could not help               
blushing- "of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter            
from Prince Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear           
the Guards won't be in action," he added as if in apology.                  
                                                     {BK3|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  "All right, all right. We'll talk it over," replied Prince Andrew.        
"Only let me report this gentleman's business, and I shall be at            
your disposal."                                                             
  While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general,        
that gentleman- evidently not sharing Boris' conception of the              
advantages of the unwritten code of subordination- looked so fixedly        
at the presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he      
had to say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned         
away and waited impatiently for Prince Andrew's return from the             
commander in chief's room.                                                  
  "You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you," said           
Prince Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the              
clavichord was. "It's no use your going to the commander in chief.          
He would say a lot of pleasant things, ask you to dinner" ("That would      
not be bad as regards the unwritten code," thought Boris), "but             
nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a battalion of us         
aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is what we'll do: I have a            
good friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince            
Dolgorukov; and though you may not know it, the fact is that now            
Kutuzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything          
is now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to Dolgorukov; I have      
to go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him about you. We           
shall see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find a place           
for you somewhere nearer the sun."                                          
  Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a         
young man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining         
help of this kind for another, which from pride he would never              
accept for himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers          
success and which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris'             
cause and went with him to Dolgorukov.                                      
  It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz         
occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.                                
                                                     {BK3|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  That same day a council of war had been held in which all the             
members of the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that           
council, contrary to the views of the old generals Kutuzov and              
Prince Schwartzenberg, it had been decided to advance immediately           
and give battle to Bonaparte. The council of war was just over when         
Prince Andrew accompanied by Boris arrived at the palace to find            
Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was still under the spell of           
the day's council, at which the party of the young had triumphed.           
The voices of those who counseled delay and advised waiting for             
something else before advancing had been so completely silenced and         
their arguments confuted by such conclusive evidence of the advantages      
of attacking that what had been discussed at the council- the coming        
battle and the victory that would certainly result from it- no              
longer seemed to be in the future but in the past. All the                  
advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior      
to Napoleon's, were concentrated in one place, the troops inspired          
by the Emperors' presence were eager for action. The strategic              
position where the operations would take place was familiar in all its      
details to the Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had             
ordained that the Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on        
the very fields where the French had now to be fought; the adjacent         
locality was known and shown in every detail on the maps, and               
Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing.                     
  Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just           
returned from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud          
of the victory that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his           
protege, but Prince Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand        
said nothing to Boris and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts        
which were uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince           
Andrew in French.                                                           
  "Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that         
the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However,            
dear fellow," he said abruptly and eagerly, "I must confess to              
having been unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother.            
What exactitude, what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what      
foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to the              
smallest detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions better than our          
present ones could have been devised. This combination of Austrian          
precision with Russian valor- what more could be wished for?"               
  "So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski.               
  "And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte           
has decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received            
from him today for the Emperor." Dolgorukov smiled significantly.           
                                                     {BK3|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  "Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski.                    
  "What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain             
time. I tell you he is in our hands, that's certain! But what was most      
amusing," he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, "was that        
we could not think how to address the reply! If not as 'Consul' and of      
course not as 'Emperor,' it seemed to me it should be to 'General           
Bonaparte.'"                                                                
  "But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him               
General Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski.              
  "That's just it," interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing. "You          
know Bilibin- he's a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him        
as 'Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.'"                                         
  Dolgorukov laughed merrily.                                               
                                                     {BK3|CH9 ^paragraph 25}
  "Only that?" said Bolkonski.                                              
  "All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the           
address. He is a wise and clever fellow."                                   
  "What was it?"                                                            
  "To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement          
francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't          
it?"                                                                        
  "Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski.                  
                                                     {BK3|CH9 ^paragraph 30}
  "Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he's dined with him- the        
present Emperor- more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met         
a more cunning or subtle diplomatist- you know, a combination of            
French adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale             
about him and Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew how      
to handle him. You know the story of the handkerchief? It is                
delightful!"                                                                
  And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince         
Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markov, our ambassador,          
purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking          
at Markov, probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how         
Markov immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up               
without touching Bonaparte's.                                               
  "Delightful!" said Bolkonski. "But I have come to you, Prince, as         
a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see..." but before            
Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon               
Dolgorukov to the Emperor.                                                  
  "Oh, what a nuisance," said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and          
pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris. "You know I should be        
very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young        
man." Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of         
good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. "But you see... another         
time!"                                                                      
  Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher          
powers as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious            
that here he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the         
enormous movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt             
himself a tiny, obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince      
Dolgorukov out into the corridor and met- coming out of the door of         
the Emperor's room by which Dolgorukov had entered- a short man in          
civilian clothes with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw              
which, without spoiling his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and          
shiftiness of expression. This short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an      
intimate friend and stared at Prince Andrew with cool intensity,            
walking straight toward him and evidently expecting him to bow or to        
step out of his way. Prince Andrew did neither: a look of animosity         
appeared on his face and the other turned away and went down the            
side of the corridor.                                                       
                                                     {BK3|CH9 ^paragraph 35}
  "Who was that?" asked Boris.                                              
  "He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men-      
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski.... It is          
such men as he who decide the fate of nations," added Bolkonski with a      
sigh he could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.               
  Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle          
of Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either Prince Andrew or              
Dolgorukov again and remained for a while with the Ismaylov regiment.       
                                                                            
BK3|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov's squadron, in which        
Nicholas Rostov served and which was in Prince Bagration's detachment,      
moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into           
action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two      
thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw the                
Cossacks and then the first and second squadrons of hussars and             
infantry battalions and artillery pass by and go forward and then           
Generals Bagration and Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants.           
All the fear before action which he had experienced as previously, all      
the inner struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of                  
distinguishing himself as a true hussar in this battle, had been            
wasted. Their squadron remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent        
that day in a dull and wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard      
firing in front and shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought         
back (there were not many of them), and at last he saw how a whole          
detachment of French cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sontnya          
of Cossacks. Evidently the affair was over and, though not big, had         
been a successful engagement. The men and officers returning spoke          
of a brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau and        
the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was bright and sunny        
after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful glitter of that autumn day      
was in keeping with the news of victory which was conveyed, not only        
by the tales of those who had taken part in it, but also by the joyful      
expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and                
adjutants, as they passed Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who         
had vainly suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and had spent      
that happy day in inactivity, was all the more depressed.                   
  "Come here, Wostov. Let's dwink to dwown our gwief!" shouted              
Denisov, who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some         
food.                                                                       
  The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking.        
  "There! They are bringing another!" cried one of the officers,            
indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot        
by two Cossacks.                                                            
  One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he        
had taken from the prisoner.                                                
                                                     {BK3|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  "Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks.                 
  "If you like, your honor!"                                                
  The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner.      
The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German      
accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when        
he heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,      
addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been          
taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to          
seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were            
there. And at every word he added: "But don't hurt my little horse!"        
and stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where      
he was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,      
imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly        
discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our            
rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which         
was so alien to us.                                                         
  The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being        
the richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought      
it.                                                                         
  "But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian good-naturedly        
to Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar.                    
                                                    {BK3|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.                
  "Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to          
make him go on.                                                             
  "The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars.         
  All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up the road            
behind him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment      
everyone was in his place, waiting.                                         
  Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.      
Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected          
mood amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every             
thought of himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his        
nearness to the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made          
up to him for the day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the         
longed-for moment of meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and          
without looking round, he was ecstatically conscious of his                 
approach. He felt it not only from the sound of the hoofs of the            
approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew near everything grew          
brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive around            
him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun shedding beams of            
mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself                 
enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and        
majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with             
Rostov's feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard        
the Emperor's voice.                                                        
                                                    {BK3|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  "The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired.                                     
  "The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared          
to that which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?"                            
  The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander's face           
was even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the           
review. It shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that      
it suggested the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was      
the face of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the             
squadron, the Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not        
more than two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was        
going on in Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he understood           
everything), at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two            
seconds into Rostov's face. A gentle, mild light poured from them.          
Then all at once he raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse         
with his left foot, and galloped on.                                        
  The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the      
battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at              
twelve o'clock left the third column with which he had been and             
galloped toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars,           
several adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the         
action.                                                                     
  This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron,         
was represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the          
Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over the        
battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were            
retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had          
passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau           
itself, a petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the           
market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the      
Emperor's arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom             
there had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his             
suite of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare,      
a different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and            
bending to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes         
and looked at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered          
head. The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his      
proximity to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the                 
Emperor's rather round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run      
down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping the horse's         
side with the spur, and how the well-trained horse looked round             
unconcerned and did not stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the          
soldier under the arms to place him on a stretcher that had been            
brought. The soldier groaned.                                               
                                                    {BK3|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  "Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor           
apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.         
  Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor's eyes and heard him, as he was      
riding away, say to Czartoryski: "What a terrible thing war is: what a      
terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!"                       
  The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within          
sight of the enemy's lines, which all day long had yielded ground to        
us at the least firing. The Emperor's gratitude was announced to the        
vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double              
ration of vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers' songs             
resounded even more merrily than on the previous night. Denisov             
celebrated his promotion to the rank of major, and Rostov, who had          
already drunk enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor's        
health. "Not 'our Sovereign, the Emperor,' as they say at official          
dinners," said he, "but the health of our Sovereign, that good,             
enchanting, and great man! Let us drink to his health and to the            
certain defeat of the French!"                                              
  "If we fought before," he said, "not letting the French pass, as          
at Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We      
will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not      
saying it right, I have drunk a good deal- but that is how I feel, and      
so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!"               
  "Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.                   
                                                    {BK3|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and        
no less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov.                          
  When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten          
filled others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand        
to the soldiers' bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white        
chest showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the      
light of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.                             
  "Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our         
enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone.      
  The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.        
  Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand      
patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.                               
                                                    {BK3|CH10 ^paragraph 30}
  "As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen          
in love with the Tsar," he said.                                            
  "Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a              
lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..."                                        
  "I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..."          
  "No, you don't understand!"                                               
  And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming        
of what happiness it would be to die- not in saving the Emperor's life      
(he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before           
his eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the          
Russian arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only        
man to experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding        
the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army        
were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the        
glory of the Russian arms.                                                  
                                                                            
BK3|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his             
physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and          
among the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor was               
unwell. He ate nothing and had slept badly that night, those around         
him reported. The cause of this indisposition was the strong                
impression made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and        
wounded.                                                                    
  At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a      
flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was          
brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The        
Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At           
midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off        
with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.             
  It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a        
meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a            
personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince        
Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate        
with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were         
actuated by a real desire for peace.                                        
  Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar,           
and remained alone with him for a long time.                                
  On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced           
two days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange          
of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the          
nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted         
till the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of             
Austerlitz was fought.                                                      
                                                     {BK3|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity- the eager talk, running      
to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants- was confined to the               
Emperor's headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this              
activity reached Kutiizov's headquarters and the staffs of the              
commanders of columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to           
all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth        
to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from         
their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started        
in one enormous mass six miles long.                                        
  The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's                
headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that         
followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large           
tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and         
a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and          
cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands        
to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.            
  Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the           
military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and      
just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is              
transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse        
has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage         
one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their      
movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though      
it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment           
comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel          
begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of        
which are beyond its ken.                                                   
  Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of               
innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement        
of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated      
human activities of 160,000 Russians and French- all their passions,        
desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride,             
fear, and enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz,        
the so-called battle of the three Emperors- that is to say, a slow          
movement of the hand on the dial of human history.                          
  Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the      
commander in chief.                                                         
                                                    {BK3|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters         
and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand      
marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.                                        
  Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the        
coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and           
dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were             
dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters          
everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something              
others do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.             
  "Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was            
sitting at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your         
old fellow? Out of sorts?"                                                  
  "I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be          
heard."                                                                     
  "But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when          
he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when            
Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."         
                                                    {BK3|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is              
Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?"                                    
  "Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a      
general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this            
general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with          
Napoleon. "If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that         
interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat        
is so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is           
afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"      
  "But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.             
  "He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him      
'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me!              
That's the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov,        
looking round at Bilibin with a smile.                                      
  "Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should      
be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a         
chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in         
our hands! No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule- not to put           
yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe      
me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than           
all the experience of old Cunctators."                                      
                                                    {BK3|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  "But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the      
outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces           
are situated," said Prince Andrew.                                          
  He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself        
formed.                                                                     
  "Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting          
up he spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been               
foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..."                                
  And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's      
plan of a flanking movement.                                                
  Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which             
might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage            
that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew        
began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his        
own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed               
absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.                
                                                    {BK3|CH11 ^paragraph 25}
  "There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you         
can say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.                               
  "I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.             
  "Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who,         
till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and      
now was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings               
victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except          
your Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column!         
The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le          
Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally                
Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names."                         
  "Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are        
now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a         
third, Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."                   
  "However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew.      
"I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out        
after shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.                            
                                                    {BK3|CH11 ^paragraph 30}
  On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking              
Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of            
tomorrow's battle.                                                          
  Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause,                
replied: "I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy      
and asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But,      
my dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after             
military matters yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"              
                                                                            
BK3|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his         
plans to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held.        
All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in             
chief's and with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to         
come, were all there at the appointed time.                                 
  Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his         
eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the                  
dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of         
chairman and president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt      
himself to be at the head of a movement that had already become             
unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill harnessed to a         
heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not      
know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to consider what      
this movement might lead to. Weyrother had been twice that evening          
to the enemy's picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the      
Emperors, Russian and Austrian, to report and explain, and to his           
headquarters where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and          
now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov's.                               
  He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the          
commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and                  
indistinctly, without looking at the man he was addressing, and did         
not reply to questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had      
a pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was        
haughty and self-confident.                                                 
  Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions            
near Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the              
commander in chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself,                  
Weyrother, and the members of the council of war. They were drinking        
tea, and only awaited Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last        
Bagration's orderly came with the news that the prince could not            
attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the commander in chief of this      
and, availing himself of permission previously given him by Kutuzov to      
be present at the council, he remained in the room.                         
  "Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said                
Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on      
which an enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out.              
                                                     {BK3|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged          
over his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low          
chair, with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms.          
At the sound of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an            
effort.                                                                     
  "Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and               
nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.                  
  If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was           
pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading         
that followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was         
absorbed by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his             
contempt for the dispositions or anything else- he was engaged in           
satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was             
asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a             
moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself that he was        
asleep, took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to            
read out the dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading         
which he also read out:                                                     
  "Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz        
and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."                                          
  The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began          
as follows:                                                                 
                                                    {BK3|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  "As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right             
extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there,      
while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his         
right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially      
if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can        
both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between                
Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of              
Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy's front. For this          
object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The              
second column marches... The third column marches..." and so on,            
read Weyrother.                                                             
  The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult                
dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning        
his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and          
seemed not to listen or even to wish to be thought to listen.               
Exactly opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed        
upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy                    
Miloradovich in a military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands      
on his knees, and his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent,      
gazing at Weyrother's face, and only turned away his eyes when the          
Austrian chief of staff finished reading. Then Miloradovich looked          
round significantly at the other generals. But one could not tell from      
that significant look whether he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied      
or not with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron          
who, with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern French      
face during the whole time of the reading, gazed at his delicate            
fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners a gold snuffbox on             
which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the longest sentences,        
he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised his head, and          
with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his thin lips            
interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the Austrian           
general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his elbows, as      
if to say: "You can tell me your views later, but now be so good as to      
look at the map and listen." Langeron lifted his eyes with an               
expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking        
an explanation, but meeting the latter's impressive but meaningless         
gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.        
  "A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud              
enough to be heard.                                                         
  Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his         
hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in         
attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an         
assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map              
conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar                 
locality. He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had           
not clearly heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother            
complied and Dohkturov noted them down.                                     
  When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron        
again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother        
or at anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry      
out such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known,      
whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.          
Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief        
aim was to show General Weyrother- who had read his dispositions            
with as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children-      
that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him         
something in military matters.                                              
                                                    {BK3|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
  When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov            
opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the         
mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if         
remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed        
his eye again, and let his head sink still lower.                           
  Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's           
vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might          
easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of         
this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a          
firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all      
objections be they what they might.                                         
  "If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he.            
  "So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron.                            
  "He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the          
smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the                 
treatment of a case.                                                        
                                                    {BK3|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,"            
said Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round           
for support to Miloradovich who was near him.                               
  But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything        
rather than of what the generals were disputing about.                      
  "Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the                 
battlefield."                                                               
  Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it        
was strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals         
and to have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced               
himself of, but had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.               
  "The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard          
from his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is                 
retreating, which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing         
his position." (He smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up         
a position in the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of             
trouble and all our arrangements to the minutest detail remain the          
same."                                                                      
                                                    {BK3|CH12 ^paragraph 25}
  "How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting      
an opportunity to express his doubts.                                       
  Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the            
generals.                                                                   
  "Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow- or rather for today,           
for it is past midnight- cannot now be altered," said he. "You have         
heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there        
is nothing more important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep."       
  He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was            
past midnight. Prince Andrew went out.                                      
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK3|CH12 ^paragraph 30}
  The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to           
express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy      
impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron,         
and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were              
right- he did not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to      
state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account      
of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and        
my life, my life," he thought, "must be risked?"                            
  "Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he              
thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of          
most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he           
remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he                
remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her              
pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously        
emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he was          
billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up and down before it.            
  The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed             
mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow              
everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more,          
none of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even           
certainly, I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall            
have to show all I can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its          
loss, the concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation        
of all the commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for          
which he had so long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly      
and clearly expresses his opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the      
Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one           
undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division-           
stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements- leads         
his division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone.            
"But death and suffering?" suggested another voice. Prince Andrew,          
however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming of his              
triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are planned by him           
alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's staff, but he          
does everything alone. The next battle is won by him alone. Kutuzov is      
removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked the other voice.      
"If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed,         
well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered himself, "I      
don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and can't, but          
if I want this- want glory, want to be known to men, want to be             
loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing           
but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never         
tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame        
and men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family- I fear nothing.        
And precious and dear as many persons are to me- father, sister, wife-      
those dearest to me- yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would        
give them all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of        
love from men I don't know and never shall know, for the love of these      
men here," he thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov's                
courtyard. The voices were those of the orderlies who were packing up;      
one voice, probably a coachman's, was teasing Kutuzov's old cook            
whom Prince Andrew knew, and who was called Tit. He was saying,             
"Tit, I say, Tit!"                                                          
  "Well?" returned the old man.                                             
  "Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag.                                    
                                                    {BK3|CH12 ^paragraph 35}
  "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!"                                                                 
                                                                            
BK3|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in         
front of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the          
line in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master         
the sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with           
our army's campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind         
him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing,          
peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray,      
now there was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer          
where the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in        
his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared- now         
the Emperor, now Denisov, and now Moscow memories- and he again             
hurriedly opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears        
of the horse he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within six          
paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was        
still the same misty darkness. "Why not?... It might easily happen,"        
thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as      
he would to any other officer; he'll say: 'Go and find out what's           
there.' There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in         
just such a chance way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave        
me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him        
the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!" And in order to               
realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to      
himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only kill         
with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor.        
Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.       
  "Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and                  
watchword- shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in      
reserve tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front,          
this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now      
before I am off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back            
I'll go to the general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the           
saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars.        
It seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a          
sloping descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as          
steep as a wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostov          
could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the         
moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought          
something moved on that white spot. "I expect it's snow... that             
spot... a spot- une tache," he thought. "There now... it's not a            
tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won't she be      
surprised when I tell her how I've seen the Emperor?) Natasha...            
take my sabretache..."- "Keep to the right, your honor, there are           
bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostov was riding      
in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head that had sunk          
almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was          
succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. "But what        
was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor?         
No, that's not it- that's tomorrow. Oh yes! Natasha... sabretache...        
saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches.           
Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought      
about him too, just opposite Guryev's house... Old Guryev.... Oh,           
but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense. The chief             
thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to        
say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But            
that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important             
thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes!           
That's right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck. All at      
once it seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What?              
What?... Cut them down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the            
moment he opened his eyes his eyes he heard in front of him, where the      
enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and      
the horse of the hussar near him pricked their ears at these shouts.        
Over there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up and went         
out again, then another, and all along the French line on the hill          
fires flared up and the shouting grew louder and louder. Rostov             
could hear the sound of French words but could not distinguish them.        
The din of many voices was too great; all he could hear was: "ahahah!"      
and "rrrr!"                                                                 
  "What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar          
beside him. "That must be the enemy's camp!"                                
  The hussar did not reply.                                                 
  "Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a         
reply.                                                                      
                                                     {BK3|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  "Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly.               
  "From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov.              
  "It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's           
dark... Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse.                           
  Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,      
pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting      
grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army          
of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and        
farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no              
longer wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy            
army had a stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!"        
he now heard distinctly.                                                    
  "They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to      
the hussar beside him.                                                      
                                                    {BK3|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The          
sound of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars      
was heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of        
hussars suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.                     
  "Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov.       
  Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode         
with the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the        
line. One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov      
with their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the      
lights and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration,         
reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the        
generals were saying.                                                       
  "Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is        
nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to          
kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us."                               
  "Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if      
they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....              
Officer!" said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still      
there?"                                                                     
                                                    {BK3|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your                 
excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied             
Rostov.                                                                     
  Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face        
in the mist.                                                                
  "Well, go and see," he said, after a pause.                               
  "Yes, sir."                                                               
  Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other      
hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the               
direction from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and         
pleased to be riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and      
dangerous misty distance where no one had been before him. Bagration        
called to him from the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov         
pretended not to hear him and did not stop but rode on and on,              
continually mistaking bushes for trees and gullies for men and              
continually discovering his mistakes. Having descended the hill at a        
trot, he no longer saw either our own or the enemy's fires, but             
heard the shouting of the French more loudly and distinctly. In the         
valley he saw before him something like a river, but when he reached        
it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road he reined          
in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride      
over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which             
gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it would be         
easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!" said he, crossed         
the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the point         
where the French pickets had been standing that evening.                    
                                                    {BK3|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him.           
And before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that        
had suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a          
report, and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive          
sound passed out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in      
the pan. Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more               
reports followed at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the      
fog singing in different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose           
spirits had risen, like his own, at the firing, and went back at a          
footpace. "Well, some more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in         
his soul. But no more shots came.                                           
  Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop           
again, and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.              
  Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had      
only lit fires to deceive us.                                               
  "What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might      
retreat and leave the pickets."                                             
  "It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said                
Bagration. "Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything           
tomorrow."                                                                  
                                                    {BK3|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  "The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was      
in the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at         
the salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his        
ride and especially by the sound of the bullets.                            
  "Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer."             
  "Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?"                      
  "What is it?"                                                             
  "Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached      
to the first squadron?"                                                     
                                                    {BK3|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  "What's your name?"                                                       
  "Count Rostov."                                                           
  "Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."                        
  "Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.                              
  But Rostov did not reply.                                                 
                                                    {BK3|CH13 ^paragraph 35}
  "Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"                               
  "I will give the order."                                                  
  "Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the              
Emperor," thought Rostov.                                                   
  "Thank God!"                                                              
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK3|CH13 ^paragraph 40}
  The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the         
fact that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops        
the Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing        
him, lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive                  
l'Empereur!" Napoleon's proclamation was as follows:                        
-                                                                           
  Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the         
Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at             
Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position          
we occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round          
me on the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will            
myself direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with          
your habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's           
ranks, but should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see      
your Emperor exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for          
there must be no doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is      
at stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the           
honor of our nation.                                                        
  Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let          
every man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these        
hirelings of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This           
victory will conclude our campaign and we can return to winter              
quarters, where fresh French troops who are being raised in France          
will join us, and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my           
people, of you, and of myself.                                              
                                                    NAPOLEON                
                                                                            
BK3|CH14                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the         
center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved,        
but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,      
which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French      
right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to           
plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into           
which they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes              
smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking           
tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a          
tattoo with their feet to warm themselves, gathering round the fires        
throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels,      
tubs, and everything that they did not want or could not carry away         
with them. Austrian column guides were moving in and out among the          
Russian troops and served as heralds of the advance. As soon as an          
Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding officer's                 
quarters, the regiment began to move: the soldiers ran from the fires,      
thrust their pipes into their boots, their bags into the carts, got         
their muskets ready, and formed rank. The officers buttoned up their        
coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved along the             
ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and packed        
the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and           
regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final               
instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who                
remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet              
resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and               
unable, from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog,      
to see either the place they were leaving or that to which they were        
going.                                                                      
  A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his                
regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has             
walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches,         
just as a sailor is always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and         
rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has around him the same          
comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the         
same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor rarely           
cares to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the         
day of battle- heaven knows how and whence- a stern note of which           
all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army,                
announcing the approach of something decisive and solemn, and               
awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of battle the         
soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their                 
regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning      
what is going on around them.                                               
  The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they          
could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and        
level ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one             
might encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns           
advanced for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and            
ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and        
unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary,        
the soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides,          
other Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier      
felt glad to know that to the unknown place where he was going, many        
more of our men were going too.                                             
  "There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the      
ranks.                                                                      
  "It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last        
night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A             
regular Moscow!"                                                            
                                                     {BK3|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  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."                                      
                                                    {BK3|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  "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."                                              
                                                    {BK3|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                                    
                                                    {BK3|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was        
moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center      
was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all         
ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in      
front of the infantry, who had to wait.                                     
  At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a      
Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry              
should be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher           
command, was to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and      
dispirited. After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending         
the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more            
densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a            
shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying            
intervals- trata... tat- and then more and more regularly and rapidly,      
and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.                                
  Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having         
stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their          
commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading            
through the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front      
or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the      
enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders      
from the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in             
those unknown surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this      
way the action began for the first, second, and third columns, which        
had gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov        
was, stood on the Pratzen Heights.                                          
  Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog;          
on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of          
what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we        
supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea          
of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock.                              
  It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a           
sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where          
Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above      
him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a            
huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist.        
The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff,            
were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and        
Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and           
begin the action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces         
that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man            
from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak which he had worn on his      
Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab horse a little in front        
of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills which seemed to rise        
out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were moving          
in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the             
valley. Not a single muscle of his face- which in those days was still      
thin- moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His         
predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force had             
already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and            
part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack         
and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that          
in a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian      
columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one         
direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into         
the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from         
the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the          
night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all      
indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far          
away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen             
constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was        
already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still        
he did not begin the engagement.                                            
                                                    {BK3|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  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.                                                       
                                                                            
BK3|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth        
column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of               
Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down          
into the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and            
gave them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to        
lead that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen        
he halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number               
forming the commander in chief's suite. He was in a state of                
suppressed excitement and irritation, though controlledly calm as a         
man is at the approach of a long-awaited moment. He was firmly              
convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of             
Arcola. How it would come about he did not know, but he felt sure it        
would do so. The locality and the position of our troops were known to      
him as far as they could be known to anyone in our army. His own            
strategic plan, which obviously could not now be carried out, was           
forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince Andrew               
considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as           
might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.                     
  To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen           
forces could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight         
would concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,"      
thought he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there,         
standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of      
me."                                                                        
  He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.      
Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with           
which I shall lead the army."                                               
  In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights         
was a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay        
like a milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left        
into which our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of      
firing. Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the      
vast orb of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that         
sea of mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there           
the enemy probably was, for something could be descried. On the             
right the Guards were entering the misty region with a sound of             
hoofs and wheels and now and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left          
beyond the village similar masses of cavalry came up and disappeared        
in the sea of mist. In front and behind moved infantry. The                 
commander in chief was standing at the end of the village letting           
the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed worn and                
irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt without           
any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in front.       
  "Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the            
village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you        
understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile          
through narrow village streets when we are marching against the             
enemy?"                                                                     
                                                     {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  "I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,"         
answered the general.                                                       
  Kutuzov laughed bitterly.                                                 
  "You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy!         
Very fine!"                                                                 
  "The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the           
dispositions..."                                                            
  "The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you             
that?... Kindly do as you are ordered."                                     
                                                    {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  "Yes, sir."                                                               
  "My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man      
is as surly as a dog."                                                      
  An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his           
hat galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the          
fourth column advanced into action.                                         
  Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to            
fall upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's          
malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that            
what was being done was not his adjutant's fault, and still not             
answering the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.                    
  "Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed        
the village. Tell it to stop and await my orders."                          
                                                    {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.                     
  "And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What         
are they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still         
not replying to the Austrian.                                               
  Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.                          
  Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped           
the third division and convinced himself that there really were no          
sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of           
the regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief's order to        
throw out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were           
other troops in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six        
miles away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a           
barren descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the             
commander in chief's name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew           
galloped back. Kutuzov still in the same place, his stout body resting      
heavily in the saddle with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily        
with closed eyes. The troops were no longer moving, but stood with the      
butts of their muskets on the ground.                                       
  "All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a         
general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all      
the left-flank columns had already descended.                               
                                                    {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  "Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst          
of a yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated.                                   
  Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of             
regiments saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole      
extended line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person        
they were greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the             
regiment in front of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he          
rode a little to one side and looked round with a frown. Along the          
road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a squadron of horsemen          
in various uniforms. Two of them rode side by side in front, at full        
gallop. One in a black uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a          
bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who was in a white uniform rode         
a black one. These were the two Emperors followed by their suites.          
Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old soldier at the front, gave         
the command "Attention!" and rode up to the Emperors with a salute.         
His whole appearance and manner were suddenly transformed. He put on        
the air of a subordinate who obeys without reasoning. With an               
affectation of respect which evidently struck Alexander                     
unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.                                       
  This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy        
face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and             
vanished. After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than          
on the field of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time      
abroad, but there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty      
and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the            
same capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent appearance      
of goodhearted innocent youth.                                              
  At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed          
brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping        
two miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked          
round at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own.             
Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others,      
all richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh,          
only slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had            
stopped behind the Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced         
young man, sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking about        
him in a leisurely and preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his        
white adjutants and asked some question- "Most likely he is asking          
at what o'clock they started," thought Prince Andrew, watching his old      
acquaintance with a smile he could not repress as he recalled his           
reception at Brunn. In the Emperors' suite were the picked young            
orderly officers of the Guard and line regiments, Russian and               
Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the Tsar's beautiful relay         
horses covered with embroidered cloths.                                     
  As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields           
enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and               
confidence of success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the            
galloping advent of all these brilliant young men.                          
                                                    {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  "Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor        
Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same            
time at the Emperor Francis.                                                
  "I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward           
respectfully.                                                               
  The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had         
not quite heard.                                                            
  "Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that      
Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word                
"waiting.") "Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty."         
  The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his      
rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as      
if complaining of Kutuzov.                                                  
                                                    {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 30}
  "You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not are not on the                
Empress' Field where a parade does not begin till all the troops are        
assembled," said the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor                
Francis, as if inviting him if not to join in at least to listen to         
what he was saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about         
him and did not listen.                                                     
  "That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a                
resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not             
being heard, and again something in his face twitched- "That is just        
why I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade and not on           
the Empress' Field." said clearly and distinctly.                           
  In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed           
dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he      
certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say.        
  The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye               
waiting to hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov,            
with respectfully bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence        
lasted for about a minute.                                                  
  "However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting         
his head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning,         
but submissive general.                                                     
                                                    {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 35}
  He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander        
of the column, gave him the order to advance.                               
  The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod        
and one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.             
  As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich,        
without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous        
tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners          
front and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing            
salute reined in his horse before the Emperor.                              
  "God be with you, general!" said the Emperor.                             
  "Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite,            
sire,"* he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among         
the gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French.                       
                                                    {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 40}
-                                                                           
  *"Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do, Sire."       
-                                                                           
  Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a            
little behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's          
presence, passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a          
bold, brisk pace.                                                           
  "Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery        
voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect          
of battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades          
in Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors,            
that he forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first          
village you've had to take," cried he.                                      
                                                    {BK3|CH15 ^paragraph 45}
  "Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers.                              
  The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had        
carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the        
field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot           
and pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the      
Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing,           
nor of the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that      
was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.                    
  The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a        
remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.                           
                                                                            
BK3|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind        
the carabineers.                                                            
  When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column          
he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been        
an inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops        
were marching along both.                                                   
  The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly            
visible about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down           
below, on the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had            
stopped and was speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who         
was a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask           
him for a field glass.                                                      
  "Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the        
distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!"                  
  The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass,           
trying to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their           
faces suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to        
be a mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly                
appeared just in front of us.                                               
                                                     {BK3|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But         
how is that?" said different voices.                                        
  With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not         
more than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a             
dense French column coming up to meet the Apsherons.                        
  "Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,"          
thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov.        
  "The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at        
that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was             
heard quite close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two           
steps from Prince Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at            
this as if at a command, everyone began to run.                             
  Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where            
five minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would      
it have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible           
not to be carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to         
lose touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp        
what was happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face,           
red and unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not          
ride away at once he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov             
remained in the same place and without answering drew out a                 
handkerchief. Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced        
his way to him.                                                             
                                                    {BK3|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling          
of his lower jaw.                                                           
  "The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the          
handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing               
soldiers. "Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably         
realizing that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and        
rode to the right.                                                          
  A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.      
  The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by      
them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why      
are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and           
fired in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode.      
Having by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of            
men, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward      
a sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the         
crowd of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on      
the slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was             
still firing and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some          
Russian infantry, neither moving forward to protect the battery nor         
backward with the fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself        
from the infantry and approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four      
remained. They were all pale and exchanged looks in silence.                
  "Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander,        
pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to              
punish him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment        
and across Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds.                    
                                                    {BK3|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing      
at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his          
leg; several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding         
the flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on      
the muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing            
without orders.                                                             
  "Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around....          
"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of      
the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the           
disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?"                       
  But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of      
shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and           
run to the standard.                                                        
  "Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's.             
  "Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and           
hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him.        
Several soldiers fell.                                                      
                                                    {BK3|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "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!..."                 
                                                                            
BK3|CH17                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the            
battle had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's              
demand to commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility          
from himself, Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to            
inquire of the commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance      
between the two flanks was more than six miles, even if the                 
messenger were not killed (which he very likely would be), and found        
the commander in chief (which would be very difficult), he would not        
be able to get back before evening.                                         
  Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his           
suite, and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and           
hope, was the first to catch his eye. He sent him.                          
  "And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in          
chief, your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap.             
  "You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov,               
hurriedly interrupting Bagration.                                           
  On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few        
hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute,          
with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and                 
generally in that state of mind which makes everything seem                 
possible, pleasant, and easy.                                               
                                                     {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be         
a general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he        
was orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going            
with a message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself.           
The morning was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart        
was full of joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his           
horse the rein and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the      
line of Bagration's troops, which had not yet advanced into action but      
were standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by            
Uvarov's cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation        
for battle; having passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the             
sound of cannon and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder           
and louder.                                                                 
  In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket          
shots at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two              
cannon shots, but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the      
hill before Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon         
that sometimes several of them were not separated from one another but      
merged into a general roar.                                                 
  He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one             
another down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling,             
spreading, and mingling with one another. He could also, by the             
gleam of bayonets visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of      
infantry and narrow lines of artillery with green caissons.                 
  Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was        
going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand      
or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men          
of some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of          
troops; but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make      
out. These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating              
effect on him; on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and              
determination.                                                              
  "Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,      
and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther           
and farther into the region where the army was already in action.           
                                                    {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  "How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought        
Rostov.                                                                     
  After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part          
of the line (the Guards) was already in action.                             
  "So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought.                   
  He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came          
galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered ranks        
were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way,                
involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.       
  "That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many         
hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole        
width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white          
uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and         
across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the      
way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at         
the same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of        
the horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their           
hoofs and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their           
figures, and even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our      
Horse Guards, advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming        
to meet them.                                                               
                                                    {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their               
horses. Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command:         
"Charge!" shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to          
full speed. Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack          
on the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go,      
but still was not in time to avoid them.                                    
  The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned           
angrily on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably          
collide. This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his          
Bedouin over (Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to           
these gigantic men and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to             
flourish his whip before the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The             
heavy black horse, sixteen hands high, shied, throwing back its             
ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove his huge spurs in                  
violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and extending its neck,      
galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards passed Rostov           
before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw that             
their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with           
red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for               
immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke         
enveloped everything.                                                       
  At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him,                   
disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after          
them or to go where he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of           
the Horse Guards that amazed the French themselves. Rostov was              
horrified to hear later that of all that mass of huge and handsome          
men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had      
galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were        
left after the charge.                                                      
  "Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall         
see the Emperor immediately! " thought Rostov and galloped on.              
  When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them        
and around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so      
much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on           
the soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the         
officers.                                                                   
                                                    {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 20}
  Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he           
heard a voice calling him by name.                                          
  "Rostov!"                                                                 
  "What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris.                               
  "I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said        
Boris with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have          
been under fire for the first time.                                         
  Rostov stopped.                                                           
                                                    {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 25}
  "Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?"                               
  "We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing                  
talkative. "Can you imagine it?" and he began describing how the            
Guards, having taken up their position and seeing troops before             
them, thought they were Austrians, and all at once discovered from the      
cannon balls discharged by those troops that they were themselves in        
the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov               
without hearing Boris to the end spurred his horse.                         
  "Where are you off to?" asked Boris.                                      
  "With a message to His Majesty."                                          
  "There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His                  
Highness," and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high                 
shoulders and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in        
his helmet and Horse Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale,          
white uniformed Austrian officer.                                           
                                                    {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 30}
  "But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the      
Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse.                     
  "Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager      
as Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his         
bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at         
the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family- the      
von Bergs- have been knights!"                                              
  He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and            
rode away.                                                                  
  Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to         
avoid again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the      
Horse Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round        
the place where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard.           
Suddenly he heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind        
our troops, where he could never have expected the enemy to be.             
  "What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army?         
Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself      
and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may," he        
reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the            
commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish          
with the rest."                                                             
                                                    {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 35}
  The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more        
and more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the           
village of Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.                  
  "What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is           
firing?" Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian           
soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.                        
  "The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he was      
told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who            
understood what was happening as little as he did.                          
  "Kill the Germans!" shouted one.                                          
  "May the devil take them- the traitors!"                                  
                                                    {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 40}
  "Zum Henker diese Russen!"* muttered a German.                            
-                                                                           
  *"Hang these Russians!"                                                   
-                                                                           
  Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse,            
screams, and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing            
died down. Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had      
been firing at one another.                                                 
                                                    {BK3|CH17 ^paragraph 45}
  "My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any      
moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a            
handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it           
can't be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!"                          
  The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head.              
Though he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights        
just where he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief,          
he could not, did not wish to, believe that.                                
                                                                            
BK3|CH18                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the      
village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer        
were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He         
urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but      
the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on        
which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all          
sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and      
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the         
dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries           
stationed on the Pratzen Heights.                                           
  "Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking              
everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.                      
  At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.          
  "Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier,             
laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.                          
  Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the      
horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to         
question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a          
carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and        
that he was dangerously wounded.                                            
                                                     {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  "It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else."             
  "I saw him myself." replied the man with a self-confident smile of        
derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've         
seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat        
in the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black           
horses fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the         
Imperial horses and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone          
except the Tsar!"                                                           
  Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a               
wounded officer passing by addressed him:                                   
  "Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander in chief? He was           
killed by a cannon ball- struck in the breast before our regiment."         
  "Not killed- wounded!" another officer corrected him.                     
                                                    {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  "Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.                                             
  "Not Kutuzov, but what's his name- well, never mind... there are not      
many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders           
are there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,        
and he walked on.                                                           
  Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now        
going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible          
to doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in        
which he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now      
to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and               
unwounded?                                                                  
  "Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a      
soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!"                            
  "Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to           
go? That way is nearer."                                                    
                                                    {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he      
would be killed.                                                            
  "It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to         
save myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the                
greatest number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The            
French had not yet occupied that region, and the Russians- the              
uninjured and slightly wounded- had left it long ago. All about the         
field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to          
fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The wounded crept         
together in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing            
screams and groans, sometimes feigned- or so it seemed to Rostov. He        
put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and        
he felt afraid- afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed      
and which he knew would not stand the sight of these unfortunates.          
  The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and      
wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an                
adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several              
shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the          
corpses around him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of         
terror and pity for himself. He remembered his mother's last letter.        
"What would she feel," thought he, "if she saw me here now on this          
field with the cannon aimed at me?"                                         
  In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from      
the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less           
disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry          
fire sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the          
battle was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the          
Emperor or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was           
wounded was correct, others that it was not, and explained the false        
rumor that had spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had           
really galloped from the field of battle with the pale and terrified        
Ober-Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the                   
battlefield with others in the Emperor's suite. One officer told            
Rostov that he had seen someone from headquarters behind the village        
to the left, and thither Rostov rode, not hoping to find anyone but         
merely to ease his conscience. When he had ridden about two miles           
and had passed the last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a               
kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback facing           
the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar to             
Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov               
fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse          
with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a          
little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs.           
Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and                   
deferentially addressed the horseman with the white plumes,                 
evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose           
figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted his              
attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand and by          
that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented and adored            
monarch.                                                                    
  "But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!"             
thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov         
saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory.        
The Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the        
charm, the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was        
happy in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded      
were false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and        
even ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had        
ordered him to deliver.                                                     
                                                    {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 20}
  But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter         
the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help        
or a chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and        
he is alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he           
had longed for more than anything else in the world, did not know           
how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him         
why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.            
  "What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of           
his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant          
or painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to      
him now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere          
sight of him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the         
Emperor that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall.        
Those speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for      
the most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph,              
generally when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked         
him for heroic deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his             
actions had proved.                                                         
  "Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the           
right flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost?      
No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his            
reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind      
look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and          
with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at         
the Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.            
  While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,         
Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the           
Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him      
to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling        
unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.      
Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke         
long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,      
covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.                 
  "And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly          
restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter          
despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.                     
                                                    {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 25}
  His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness        
was the cause his grief.                                                    
  He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the                
sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his devotion to the               
Emperor and he had not made use of it.... "What have I done?"               
thought he. And he turned round and galloped back to the place where        
he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one beyond the ditch now.         
Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one of the drivers      
he learned that Kutuzov's staff were not far off, in the village the        
vehicles were going to. Rostov followed them. In front of him walked        
Kutuzov's groom leading horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and        
behind that walked an old, bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked           
cap and sheepskin coat.                                                     
  "Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.                                        
  "What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.                             
  "Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"                                                  
                                                    {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 30}
  "Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed      
in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.                            
-                                                                           
  Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points.        
More than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.         
  Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other               
columns after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly           
confused masses.                                                            
  The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were             
crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of         
Augesd.                                                                     
                                                    {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 35}
  After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot               
cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from        
numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights,             
directed at our retreating forces.                                          
  In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept      
up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops.      
It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many             
years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap         
peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled           
up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on            
that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and          
blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with        
wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts- on that      
narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and      
between the wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now               
crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying      
and killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed          
themselves in the same way.                                                 
  Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around,          
or a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and        
splashing with blood those near them.                                       
  Dolokhov- now an officer- wounded in the arm, and on foot, with           
the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,      
represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by           
the crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and,           
jammed in on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had            
fallen under a cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon          
ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front and splashed         
Dolokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing forward desperately,                
squeezed together, moved a few steps, and again stopped.                    
  "Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here          
another two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one.             
                                                    {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 40}
  Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the          
edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto         
the slippery ice that covered the millpool.                                 
  "Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked           
under him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It           
bears!..."                                                                  
  The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it      
would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon            
even under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to           
the bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at      
the entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to             
address Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd      
that everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general      
fell from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or           
thought of raising him.                                                     
  "Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go          
on!" innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the      
general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were             
shouting.                                                                   
  One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto      
the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen      
pond. The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg      
slipped into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to         
his waist. The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped         
his horse, but from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why        
do you stop? Go on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the           
crowd. The soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the              
horses to make them turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank.        
The ice, that had held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass,      
and some forty men who were on it dashed, some forward and some             
back, drowning one another.                                                 
                                                    {BK3|CH18 ^paragraph 45}
  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.                               
                                                                            
BK3|CH19                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in         
his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and                
unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.               
  Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did           
not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt        
that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his      
head.                                                                       
  "Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw        
today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering           
either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all         
till now. But where am I?"                                                  
  He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices         
speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same           
lofty sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher,        
and between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and        
did not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had        
ridden up and stopped near him.                                             
  It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding        
over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the               
batteries firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and        
wounded left on the field.                                                  
                                                     {BK3|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  "Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian                  
grenadier, who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened          
nape, lay on his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.          
  "The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your               
Majesty," said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were        
firing at Augesd.                                                           
  "Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone      
on a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back         
with the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had          
already been taken by the French as a trophy.)                              
  "That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.            
  Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was        
Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he        
heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not            
only did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at        
once forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to         
death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He      
knew it was Napoleon- his hero- but at that moment Napoleon seemed          
to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was          
passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the            
clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who           
might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only            
glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they           
would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so           
beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so                 
differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and utter a sound.      
He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan which aroused      
his own pity.                                                               
                                                    {BK3|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                   
                                                    {BK3|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
  "All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor      
Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian               
officer in the white uniform of the Horse Guards.                           
  Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg          
society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of      
the Horse Guards.                                                           
  Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.                 
  "Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners.                 
  They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.                                    
                                                    {BK3|CH19 ^paragraph 20}
  "You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of             
Horse Guards?" asked Napoleon.                                              
  "I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin.                                 
  "Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon.              
  "The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward,"          
said Repnin.                                                                
  "I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young        
man beside you?"                                                            
                                                    {BK3|CH19 ^paragraph 25}
  Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.                                 
  After looking at him Napoleon smiled.                                     
  "He's very young to come to meddle with us."                              
  "Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a               
failing voice.                                                              
  "A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!"          
                                                    {BK3|CH19 ^paragraph 30}
  Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the               
Emperor's eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to         
attract his attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on         
the battlefield and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young          
man" that was connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.                   
  "Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?"        
  Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few      
words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed        
straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that            
moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so          
mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory         
appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he           
had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.                      
  Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the      
stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,         
suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into           
Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of              
greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and      
the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one        
alive could understand or explain.                                          
  The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to         
one of the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to           
and taken to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their               
wounds. Au revoir, Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and             
galloped away.                                                              
                                                    {BK3|CH19 ^paragraph 35}
  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.                                          
                                                    {BK3|CH19 ^paragraph 40}
  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.                                         
                                                                            
BK4|CH1                                                                     
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                BOOK FOUR: 1806                             
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave.            
Denisov was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to              
travel with him as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a      
comrade at the last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had         
drunk three bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts          
across the snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to            
Moscow, but lay at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew         
more and more impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.                      
  "How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,        
shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov,      
when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had      
entered Moscow.                                                             
  "Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with        
his whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed          
of the sleigh.                                                              
  Denisov gave no answer.                                                   
                                                      {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  "There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has      
his stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And         
here's the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you          
hurry up? Now then!"                                                        
  "Which house is it?" asked the driver.                                    
  "Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's      
our house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov!      
We're almost there!"                                                        
  Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.                     
  "Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are          
in our house, aren't they?"                                                 
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  "Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study."                   
  "Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now,           
don't forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his           
new mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake        
up, Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again            
nodding. "Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka- get          
on!" Rostov shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his         
door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at all. At last           
the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw        
overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off,         
the porch, and the post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out          
before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house stood cold      
and silent, as if quite regardless of who had come to it. There was no      
one in the hall. "Oh God! Is everyone all right?" he thought, stopping      
for a moment with a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to         
run along the hall and up the warped steps of the familiar                  
staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always angered the         
countess when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely as             
ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the anteroom.                      
  Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was        
so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat      
plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the               
opening door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly             
changed to one of delighted amazement.                                      
  "Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his young      
master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with               
excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order          
to announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss      
the young man's shoulder.                                                   
  "All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.                           
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have      
a look at you, your excellency."                                            
  "Is everything quite all right?"                                          
  "The Lord be thanked, yes!"                                               
  Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone          
to forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the      
large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card         
tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had        
already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the               
drawing room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and        
began hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the      
same kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more         
kissing, more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish          
which was Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted,           
talked, and kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not            
there, he noticed that.                                                     
  "And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..."                        
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  "Here he is... our own... Kolya,* dear fellow... How he has               
changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..."                              
-                                                                           
  *Nicholas.                                                                
-                                                                           
  "And me, kiss me!"                                                        
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 25}
  "Dearest... and me!"                                                      
  Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count          
were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the        
room, exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.                                     
  Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!"                 
  Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his         
face with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang        
away and pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked          
piercingly.                                                                 
  All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all         
around were lips seeking a kiss.                                            
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 30}
  Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,        
looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she          
longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at        
this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not           
taking her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave        
her a grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for                
someone. The old countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard        
at the door, steps so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's.         
  Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made         
since he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her.            
When they met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her      
face, but only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket.      
Denisov, who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there        
and wiped his eyes at the sight.                                            
  "Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to      
the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.                              
  "You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing           
and embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here      
is Denisov!"                                                                
  The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of            
Denisov.                                                                    
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 35}
  "Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture,         
springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This         
escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled      
and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it.                                      
  Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs           
all gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.                            
  The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every         
moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every         
movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully               
adoring eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places      
nearest to him and disputed with one another who should bring him           
his tea, handkerchief, and pipe.                                            
  Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first          
moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed          
insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.      
  Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers          
slept till ten o'clock.                                                     
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 40}
  In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,           
satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly      
cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The              
servants were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving,           
and their well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell      
of tobacco.                                                                 
  "Hallo, Gwiska- my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice.              
"Wostov, get up!"                                                           
  Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his           
disheveled head from the hot pillow.                                        
  "Why, is it late?"                                                        
  "Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A              
rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of            
girls' voices came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a           
crack and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black          
hair, and merry faces. It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had            
come to see whether they were getting up.                                   
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 45}
  "Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door.          
  "Directly!"                                                               
  Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer         
room, with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder           
brother, and forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see         
men undressed, opened the bedroom door.                                     
  "Is this your saber?" he shouted.                                         
  The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the              
blanket, looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door,      
having let Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from            
behind it.                                                                  
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 50}
  "Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice.         
  "Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said,             
addressing the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.              
  Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing          
gown, and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just        
getting her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was                
twirling round and was about to expand her dresses into a balloon           
and sit down. They were dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and         
were both fresh, rosy, and bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking      
her brother's arm, led him into the sitting room, where they began          
talking. They hardly gave one another time to ask questions and give        
replies concerning a thousand little matters which could not                
interest anyone but themselves. Natasha laughed at every word he            
said or that she said herself, not because what they were saying was        
amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable to control her           
joy which expressed itself by laughter.                                     
  "Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything.                     
  Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that      
childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he            
left home now for the first time after eighteen months again                
brightened his soul and his face.                                           
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 55}
  "No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you?         
I'm awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want      
to know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?"                 
  "Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov.                                   
  "Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to        
her- thou or you?"                                                          
  "As may happen," said Rostov.                                             
  "No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other          
time. No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend.            
Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!"                
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 60}
  She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her          
long, slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is      
covered even by a ball dress.                                               
  "I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in         
the fire and pressed it there!"                                             
  Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what         
used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly            
bright eyes, Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood             
which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best         
joys of his life; and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of      
love did not seem to him senseless, he understood and was not               
surprised at it.                                                            
  "Well, and is that all?" he asked.                                        
  "We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just      
nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does        
it for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly."                
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 65}
  "Well, what then?"                                                        
  "Well, she loves me and you like that."                                   
  Natasha suddenly flushed.                                                 
  "Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are        
to forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him      
be free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?"          
asked Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that          
what she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.               
  Rostov became thoughtful.                                                 
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 70}
  "I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so              
charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness."                   
  "No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over.          
We knew you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say          
that- if you consider yourself bound by your promise- it will seem          
as if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were            
marrying her because you must, and that wouldn't do at all."                
  Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had            
already struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when          
he had caught a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She           
was a charming girl of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with         
him (he did not doubt that for an instant). Why should he not love her      
now, and even marry her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so         
many other pleasures and interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a      
wise decision," he thought, "I must remain free."                           
  "Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later         
on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!                                          
  "Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued.                    
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 75}
  "Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about        
him or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind."                 
  "Dear me! Then what are you up now?"                                      
  "Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have         
you seen Duport?"                                                           
  "No."                                                                     
  "Not seen Duport- the famous dancer? Well then, you won't                 
understand. That's what I'm up to."                                         
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 80}
  Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran          
back a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply      
together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.                 
  "See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself        
on her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry         
anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone."                      
  Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom,          
felt envious and Natasha could not help joining in.                         
  "No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating.                  
  "Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?"                         
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 85}
  Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell           
him so when I see him!"                                                     
  "Dear me!" said Rostov.                                                   
  "But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov           
nice?" she asked.                                                           
  "Yes, indeed!"                                                            
  "Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,               
Denisov?"                                                                   
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 90}
  "Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow."         
  "You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?"                  
  "Very."                                                                   
  "Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together."                 
  And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet        
dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When          
Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how      
to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of        
meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could           
not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters,      
was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave      
with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you-      
Sonya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender               
kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by             
Natasha's intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked      
him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom        
and told her that one way or another he would never cease to love her,      
for that would be impossible.                                               
                                                     {BK4|CH1 ^paragraph 95}
  "How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were          
silent, "that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet        
like strangers."                                                            
  Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like          
most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not          
only Sonya, Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who-          
dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a         
brilliant match- blushed like a girl.                                       
  Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with          
pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as      
he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the      
ladies and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.              
                                                                            
BK4|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was                
welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their          
darling Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and          
polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of          
hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.            
  The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough      
that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,        
acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the         
latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the         
latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,         
passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself        
to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be        
at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His      
despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money          
from Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly- he        
now recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.      
Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and      
wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in         
action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected            
racing men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a          
lady on one of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led         
the mazurka at the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field         
Marshal Kamenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate             
terms with a colonel of forty to whom Denisov had introduced                
  His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But            
still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him,          
he often spoke about him and about his love for him, letting it be          
understood that he had not told all and that there was something in         
his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with        
his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for the        
Emperor, who was spoken of as the "angel incarnate."                        
  During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army,          
he did not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She      
was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him,           
but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do            
that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears          
to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many           
other things. When he thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he      
said to himself, "Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such          
girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will be time enough to        
think about love when I want to, but now I have no time." Besides,          
it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to         
his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies' society with an              
affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club,      
sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house- that was another        
matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!                      
  At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy            
arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club.        
                                                      {BK4|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving        
orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the Club's head      
cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish        
for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of        
the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the         
arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so      
well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and        
still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of         
their own resources what might be needed for the success of the             
fete. The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders          
with pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could      
they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner           
costing several thousand rubles.                                            
  "Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!"      
  "Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook.                   
  The count considered.                                                     
  "We can't have less- yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said      
he, bending down a finger.                                                  
                                                     {BK4|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  "Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.             
  "Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was      
forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he         
clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh,      
Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum           
who appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to      
set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must        
be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred            
pots here on Friday."                                                       
  Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his               
"little countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of         
importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club            
steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the            
clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count,              
handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made      
sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.                       
  "Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile,        
as if he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would          
only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own               
orchestra, but shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You              
military men like that sort of thing."                                      
  "Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less            
before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with      
a smile.                                                                    
                                                     {BK4|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  The old count pretended to be angry.                                      
  "Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"                                     
  And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and                  
respectful expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the        
father and son.                                                             
  "What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said         
he. "Laughing at us old fellows!"                                           
  "That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good         
dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their            
business!                                                                   
                                                     {BK4|CH2 ^paragraph 20}
  "That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his        
son by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and      
pair at once, and go to Bezukhob's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has            
sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get        
them from anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in      
and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay- the          
coachman Ipatka knows- and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who          
danced at Count Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and         
bring him along to me."                                                     
  "And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked                 
Nicholas, laughing. "Dear, dear!..."                                        
  At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the                     
businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never            
left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon      
the count in his dressing gown every day, he invariably became              
confused and begged her to excuse his costume.                              
  "No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her           
eyes. "But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now        
we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in      
any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is      
now on the staff."                                                          
  The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself         
one of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.       
                                                     {BK4|CH2 ^paragraph 25}
  "Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with          
him?" he asked.                                                             
  Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was             
depicted on her face.                                                       
  "Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what          
we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing      
when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul      
as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to          
give him what consolation I can."                                           
  "Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.             
  Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.                                           
                                                     {BK4|CH2 ^paragraph 30}
  "Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper,        
"has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited      
him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and            
that daredevil after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show           
her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half          
smile betraying her sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called             
Dolokhov. "They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune."              
  "Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club- it will all          
blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet."                                
  Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred         
and fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting        
the guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince                
Bagration, to dinner.                                                       
  On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow      
had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to             
victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not        
believe it, while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so        
strange an event. In the English Club, where all who were                   
distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered when the            
news began to arrive in December, nothing was said about the war and        
the last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The         
men who set the tone in conversation- Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri         
Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski- did not show        
themselves at the Club, but met in private houses in intimate circles,      
and the Moscovites who took their opinions from others- Ilya Rostov         
among them- remained for a while without any definite opinion on the        
subject of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that            
something was wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult,         
and so it was best to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury          
comes out of its room, the bigwigs who guided the Club's opinion            
reappeared, and everybody began speaking clearly and definitely.            
Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-of, and impossible           
event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners      
of Moscow the same things began to be said. These reasons were the          
treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the treachery of      
the Pole Przebyszewski and of the Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's             
incapacity, and (it was whispered) the youth and inexperience of the        
sovereign, who had trusted worthless and insignificant people. But the      
army, the Russian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and had        
achieved miracles of valor.The soldiers, officers, and generals were        
heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished          
by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz,             
where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day            
beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous as his own. What also          
conduced to Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was the fact        
that he had no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In         
his person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier            
without connections and intrigues, and to one who was associated by         
memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov. Moreover,        
paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing               
disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov.                                         
  "Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent      
him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire.               
Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,            
calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.                           
                                                     {BK4|CH2 ^paragraph 35}
  All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on             
modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting           
consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and           
the words of Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to         
battle by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to            
show them that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but        
that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all      
sides, new and fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of         
heroism shown by our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a        
standard, another had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five        
cannon singlehanded. Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know          
him, as having, when wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the      
left, and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those      
who knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a      
pregnant wife with his eccentric father.                                    
                                                                            
BK4|CH3                                                                     
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were            
filled with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in         
springtime. The members and guests of the Club wandered hither and          
thither, sat, stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in        
evening dress, and a few here and there with powdered hair and in           
Russian kaftans. Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and         
smart stockings, stood at every door anxiously noting visitors'             
every movement in order to offer their services. Most of those present      
were elderly, respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat           
fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This class of guests and         
members sat in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual          
groups. A minority of those present were casual guests- chiefly             
young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov- who was           
now again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The faces of these young      
people, especially those who were militarymen, bore that expression of      
condescending respect for their elders which seems to say to the older      
generation, "We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the          
same remember that the future belongs to us."                               
  Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre, who at his      
wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles,          
went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull.          
Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience      
to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people,      
he treated them with absent-minded contempt.                                
  By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his         
wealth and connections he belonged to the groups old and honored            
guests, and so he went from one group to another. Some of the most          
important old men were the center of groups which even strangers            
approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known men. The           
largest circles formed round Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and                  
Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how the Russians had been              
overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force their way through      
them with bayonets.                                                         
  Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from          
Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.          
  In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the         
Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply        
to the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing         
close by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently           
failed to learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of           
crowing like a cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the          
wit, making him feel that in that place and on that day, it was             
improper to speak so of Kutuzov.                                            
                                                      {BK4|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft        
boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the            
important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all         
equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up         
young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov         
stood at a window with Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made      
and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed                
Dolokhov's hand.                                                            
  "Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been                
together out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili                   
Ignatovich... How d'ye do, old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man      
who was passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a        
general stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a                
frightened face: "He's arrived!"                                            
  Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and- like rye shaken             
together in a shovel- the guests who had been scattered about in            
different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing room by      
the door of the ballroom.                                                   
  Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or          
sword, which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the        
hall porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded        
whip over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of           
the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian         
and foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast.          
Evidently just before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and          
whiskers trimmed, which changed his appearance for the worse. There         
was something naively festive in his air, which, in conjunction with        
his firm and virile features, gave him a rather comical expression.         
Bekleshev and Theodore Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the      
doorway to allow him, as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration      
was embarrassed, not wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and        
this caused some delay at the doors, but after all he did at last           
enter first. He walked shyly and awkwardly over the parquet floor of        
the reception room, not knowing what to do with his hands; he was more      
accustomed to walk over a plowed field under fire, as he had done at        
the head of the Kursk regiment at Schon Grabern- and he would have          
found that easier. The committeemen met him at the first door and,          
expressing their delight at seeing such a highly honored guest, took        
possession of him as it were, without waiting for his reply,                
surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was at first            
impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd of members and      
guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at Bagration      
over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count          
Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way, dear boy!         
Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more energetically            
than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and seated them          
on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the          
Club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his way           
through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a            
minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver      
which he presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some              
verses composed and printed in the hero's honor. Bagration, on              
seeing the salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help.        
But all eyes demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in             
their power, he resolutely took the salver with both hands and              
looked sternly and reproachfully at the count who had presented it          
to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from Bagration (or he              
would, it seemed, have held it till evening and have gone in to dinner      
with it) and drew his attention to the verses.                              
  "Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing      
his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and            
serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began        
reading them aloud. Bagration bowed his bead and listened:                  
                                                     {BK4|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
     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!                             
                                                     {BK4|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
     E'en fortunate Napoleon                                                
     Knows by experience, now, Bagration,                                   
     And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...                             
-                                                                           
But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo                 
announced that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the              
dining room came the resounding strains of the polonaise:                   
-                                                                           
     Conquest's joyful thunder waken,                                       
                                                     {BK4|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
     Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...                                     
-                                                                           
and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading        
his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was      
more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the          
rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between        
two Alexanders- Bekleshev and Naryshkin- which was a significant            
allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took           
their seats in the dining room, according to their rank and                 
importance: the more important nearer to the honored guest, as              
naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest.                
  Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to                
Bagration, who recognized him and said a few words to him,                  
disjointed and awkward, as were all the words he spoke that day, and        
Count Ilya looked joyfully and proudly around while Bagration spoke to      
his son.                                                                    
  Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov,         
sat almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre,              
beside Prince Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of        
the committee sat facing Bagration and, as the very personification of      
Moscow hospitality, did the honors to the prince.                           
  His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and         
the other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till      
the end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions          
to the footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety.           
Everything was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet        
(at sight of which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious                  
pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne        
glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, the count          
exchanged glances with the other committeemen. "There will be many          
toasts, it's time to begin," he whispered, and taking up his glass, he      
rose. All were silent, waiting for what he would say.                       
                                                     {BK4|CH3 ^paragraph 25}
  "To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at           
the same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and            
enthusiasm. The band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful               
thunder waken..." All rose and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and      
shouted "Hurrah!" in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted it      
on the field at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could          
be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. "To the            
health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he roared, "Hurrah!" and             
emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many              
followed his example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time.      
When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass         
and everybody sat down again, smiling at the noise they had made and        
exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a note         
lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, "To the health of the         
hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and           
again his blue eyes grew moist. "Hurrah!" cried the three hundred           
voices again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a               
cantata composed by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:                                 
-                                                                           
     Russians! O'er all barriers on!                                        
     Courage conquest guarantees;                                           
     Have we not Bagration?                                                 
                                                     {BK4|CH3 ^paragraph 30}
     He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.                              
-                                                                           
  As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was            
proposed and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more             
glass was smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to              
Bekleshev, Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the          
committee, to all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and          
finally to Count Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the            
banquet. At that toast, the count took out his handkerchief and,            
covering his face, wept outright.                                           
                                                                            
BK4|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate        
and drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed      
that some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all        
through dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed      
eyes and a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge      
of his nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and        
hear nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by          
some depressing and unsolved problem.                                       
  The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by      
the princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy         
with his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that              
morning, which in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters          
said that he saw badly through his spectacles, but that his wife's          
connection with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre         
absolutely disbelieved both the princess' hints and the letter, but he      
feared now to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every         
time he chanced to meet Dolokhov's handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt      
something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly      
away. Involuntarily recalling his wife's past and her relations with        
Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be      
true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his          
wife. He involuntarily remembered how Dolokhov, who had fully               
recovered his former position after the campaign, had returned to           
Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations      
with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his          
house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled        
how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at      
their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's              
beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left      
them for a day.                                                             
  "Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It           
would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule      
me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended            
him, and helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add      
to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it         
were true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can't,          
believe it." He remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in        
his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and         
dropping them into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel         
without any reason, or shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That          
expression was often on Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes,          
he is a bully," thought Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him.        
It must seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that must           
please him. He must think that I, too, am afraid of him- and in fact I      
am afraid of him," he thought, and again he felt something terrible         
and monstrous rising in his soul. Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were        
now sitting opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostov was talking         
merrily to his two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the        
other a notorious duelist and rake, and every now and then he               
glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-minded, and         
massive figure was a very noticeable one at the dinner. Rostov              
looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre appeared to his           
hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a           
word- an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his preoccupation        
and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had not                 
responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk,             
Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.                    
  "What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy        
of exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's             
health?"                                                                    
  Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting         
till all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov.         
                                                      {BK4|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  "Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise          
engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!"                                          
  "Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov.          
  "Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov.                                 
  "One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.       
  Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were            
talking about him. He reddened and turned away.                             
                                                     {BK4|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  "Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with      
a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his        
mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.                                  
  "Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin- and their                
lovers!" he added.                                                          
  Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking        
at Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing             
leaflets with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of           
the principal guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov,           
leaning across, snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre      
looked at Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and         
monstrous that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took               
possession of him. He leaned his whole massive body across the table.       
  "How dare you take it?" he shouted.                                       
  Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski           
and the neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov.          
                                                     {BK4|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  "Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened            
voices.                                                                     
  Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that      
smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!"                
  "You shan't have it!" he said distinctly.                                 
  Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.                      
  "You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and,          
pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.                             
                                                     {BK4|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt      
that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him         
the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative.      
He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's           
request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to          
be Dolokhov's second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements        
for the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home,           
but Rostov with Dolokhov and Denisov stayed on at the Club till             
late, listening to the gypsies and other singers.                           
  "Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki,"said Dolokhov, as he took         
leave of Rostov in the Club porch.                                          
  "And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked.                               
  Dolokhov paused.                                                          
  "Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two          
words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write      
affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be           
killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the            
firm intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as                 
possible, and then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma      
used to tell me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see        
one your fear's all gone, and your only thought is not to let him           
get away!' And that's how it is with me. A demain, mon cher."*              
                                                     {BK4|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  *Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.                                           
-                                                                           
  Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the      
Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already            
there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations          
which had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face           
was yellow. He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about          
distractedly and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He           
was entirely absorbed by two considerations: his wife's guilt, of           
which after his sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt, and         
the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor      
of a man who was nothing to him.... "I should perhaps have done the         
same thing in his place," thought Pierre. "It's even certain that I         
should have done the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I        
shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee.           
Can't I go away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?" passed         
through his mind. But just at moments when such thoughts occurred to        
him, he would ask in a particularly calm and absent-minded way,             
which inspired the respect of the onlookers, "Will it be long? Are          
things ready?"                                                              
  When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the              
barriers, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre.              
                                                     {BK4|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  "I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and      
should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in        
choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment      
I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient          
ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were        
not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous..."                   
  "Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre.                             
  "Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your                
opponent will accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others             
concerned in the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not        
yet believe that the affair had come to an actual duel). "You know,         
Count, it is much more honorable to admit one's mistake than to let         
matters become irreparable. There was no insult on either side.             
Allow me to convey...."                                                     
  "No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the             
same.... Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and      
where to shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.                  
  He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of      
the trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand- a fact         
that he did not to confess.                                                 
                                                     {BK4|CH4 ^paragraph 35}
  "Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he.                      
  "No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on           
his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to      
the appointed place.                                                        
  The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,         
where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine            
forest covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up        
during the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at        
the farther edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces,         
left tracks in the deep wet snow between the place where they had been      
standing and Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck            
intothe ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and      
misty; at forty paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three            
minutes all had been ready, but they still delayed and all were             
silent.                                                                     
                                                                            
BK4|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  "Well begin!" said Dolokhov.                                              
  "All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling        
of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly          
begun could no longer be averted but was taking its course                  
independently of men's will.                                                
  Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies      
have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols,           
and at the word thwee begin to advance.                                     
  "O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside.                
  The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and              
nearer to one another, beginning to see one another through the             
mist. They had the right to fire when they liked as they approached         
the barrier. Dolokhov walked slowly without raising his pistol,             
looking intently with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his              
antagonist's face. His mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.           
                                                      {BK4|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  "So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three,"        
he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into         
the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length,        
apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held        
carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it         
and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed           
off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then           
quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been          
shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre                 
shuddered at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations,             
stood still. The smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him          
from seeing anything for an instant, but there was no second report as      
he had expected. He only heard Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his            
figure came in view through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his      
left side, while the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face           
was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said something.                         
  "No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not              
over." And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the           
saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he          
wiped it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning            
face was pallid and quivered.                                               
  "Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.      
  "Please," he uttered with an effort.                                      
  Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov        
and was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov        
cried:                                                                      
                                                     {BK4|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by        
his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to        
the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself,      
drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He           
sucked and sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but        
his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as          
he mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.         
  "Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski.        
  "Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary.                    
  Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs        
helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing           
Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski          
closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and              
Dolokhov's angry cry.                                                       
  "Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on      
the snow.                                                                   
                                                     {BK4|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,      
trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:            
  "Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face.       
  Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.                                  
  Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.                  
  The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not          
answer a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering            
Moscow he suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort,            
took Rostov, who was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was            
struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender         
expression on Dolokhov's face.                                              
                                                     {BK4|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  "Well? How do you feel?" he asked.                                        
  "Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping         
voice. "Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have         
killed her, killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...."         
  "Who?" asked Rostov.                                                      
  "My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and             
Dolokhov pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears.                        
  When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that          
he was living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not         
survive it. He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.                    
                                                     {BK4|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise      
learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow      
with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most                 
affectionate of sons and brothers.                                          
                                                                            
BK4|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg         
and in Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after      
the duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained        
in his father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.      
  He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that        
had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,         
thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not          
fall asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace      
the room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early            
days of their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid,                  
passionate look on her face, and then immediately he saw beside her         
Dolokhov's handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen        
it at the banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, and             
suffering, as it had been when he reeled and sank on the snow.              
  "What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover,          
yes, killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come      
to do it?"- "Because you married her," answered an inner voice.             
  "But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without          
loving her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled         
that moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words      
he had found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from        
that! Even then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not        
so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out."                     
  He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.              
Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection          
of how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into      
his study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his      
head steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and      
at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing                  
respectful understanding of his employer's happiness.                       
                                                      {BK4|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                                                                   
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK4|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  *"You clear out of this."                                                 
-                                                                           
  "Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a           
depraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And        
now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and            
perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"          
  Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of          
what is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their             
troubles. He digested his sufferings alone.                                 
  "It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that?        
Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime'* to her,         
which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must                 
endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's        
nonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor- that's all           
apart from myself.                                                          
                                                     {BK4|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  *I love you.                                                              
-                                                                           
  "Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and         
a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view         
they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a             
martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a      
despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive-        
live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is          
it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in          
comparison with eternity?"                                                  
  But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such                 
reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments      
when he had most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he      
felt the blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move           
about and break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell         
her that 'Je vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he         
had said it for the tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diable           
alloit-il faire dans cette galere?" occurred to him, and he began to        
laugh at himself.                                                           
                                                     {BK4|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                 
                                                     {BK4|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  "Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should            
like to know?" she asked sternly.                                           
  "I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.                                    
  "So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel              
about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."                         
  Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth,           
but could not reply.                                                        
  "If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe      
everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that             
Dolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness        
of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and      
you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel            
prove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew         
that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of         
all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing          
what you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without            
cause." Helene raised her voice and became more and more excited, "A        
man who's a better man than you in every way..."                            
                                                     {BK4|CH6 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                                                                   
                                                     {BK4|CH6 ^paragraph 35}
  "We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.                  
  "Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said            
Helene. "Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"                     
  Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.          
  "I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table        
with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her         
brandishing the slab.                                                       
  Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His         
father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and        
delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down      
on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a                
terrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows         
what he would have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the         
room.                                                                       
                                                     {BK4|CH6 ^paragraph 40}
-                                                                           
  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.                                              
                                                                            
BK4|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz         
and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite          
of the letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his      
body had not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What           
was worst of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a      
possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the          
people of the place and that he might now be lying, recovering or           
dying, alone among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The        
gazettes from which the old prince first heard of the defeat at             
Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly and vaguely, that after            
brilliant engagements the Russians had had to retreat and had made          
their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince understood from this      
official report that our army had been defeated. A week after the           
gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from               
Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.         
  "Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his        
hand and at the head of a regiment- he fell as a hero, worthy of his        
father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the         
whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort      
myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise          
he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the field          
of battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."            
  After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone          
in his study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next                
morning, but he was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the          
architect, and though he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.        
  When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at        
his lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.                         
  "Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice,              
throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own        
impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that          
wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.)                      
                                                      {BK4|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her.      
Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad,         
not crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging        
over her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the           
worst in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and             
incomprehensible- the death of one she loved.                               
  "Father! Andrew!"- said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such        
an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her            
father could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.                  
  "Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed!             
Kutuzov writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to         
drive the princess away by that scream... "Killed!"                         
  The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but        
on hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in         
her beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy- a supreme joy apart          
from the joys and sorrows of this world- overflowed the great grief         
within her. She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took         
his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy          
neck.                                                                       
  "Father" she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together."      
                                                     {BK4|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                    
                                                     {BK4|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                   
                                                     {BK4|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  "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."                                                               
                                                     {BK4|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.           
                                                                            
BK4|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  "Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning        
of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit,      
but as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word,         
and even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had           
come, so now the smile of the little princess- influenced by the            
general mood though without knowing its cause- was such as to remind        
one still more of the general sorrow.                                       
  "Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique*- as Foka the cook        
calls it- has disagreed with me."                                           
-                                                                           
  *Fruhstuck: breakfast.                                                    
-                                                                           
                                                      {BK4|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  "What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are      
very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,             
ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.                                    
  "Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said           
one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife            
from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last          
fortnight.)                                                                 
  "Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go.            
Courage, my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.        
  "Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on        
the little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of                
inevitable pain showed itself.                                              
  "No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so,         
Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a      
suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some                
affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary                
Bogdanovna.                                                                 
                                                     {BK4|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room.                 
  The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small,        
plump white hands with an air of calm importance.                           
  "Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary             
looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.                        
  "Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not          
hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything             
about it."                                                                  
  "But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the          
princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they        
had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at      
any moment.)                                                                
                                                     {BK4|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna.            
"We'll manage very well without a doctor."                                  
  Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy      
being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the        
large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On          
their faces was a quiet and solemn look.                                    
  Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the        
house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and                
watching what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with          
quiet steps in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and           
turned away. She did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the         
door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her              
prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise and        
distress she found that her prayers did not calm her excitement.            
Suddenly her door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna,      
who hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had forbidden           
it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round her head.                  
  "I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and            
here I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his          
saint, my angel," she said with a sigh.                                     
  "Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"                                                 
                                                     {BK4|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "God is merciful, birdie."                                                
  The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by           
the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began             
reading. Only when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one      
another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging.         
Everyone in the house was dominated by the same feeling that                
Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the          
superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman      
in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one           
spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good          
manners habitual in the prince's household, a common anxiety, a             
softening of the heart, and a consciousness that something great and        
mysterious was being accomplished at that moment made itself felt.          
  There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants'      
hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs'            
quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old         
prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent         
Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.- "Say only that 'the prince        
told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."                          
  "Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna,           
giving the messenger a significant look.                                    
  Tikhon went and told the prince.                                          
                                                     {BK4|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  "Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon      
did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.                 
  After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and,           
seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his         
perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed         
him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles          
or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world          
continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of        
suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable         
did not lessen but increased. No one slept.                                 
  It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume      
its sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A      
relay of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German            
doctor from Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback      
with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the             
country road with its hollows and snow-covered pools of water.              
  Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her      
luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of             
which she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from         
under the kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.            
  Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely      
hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds          
of times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess          
Mary in Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead        
of a midwife.                                                               
                                                     {BK4|CH8 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                                                       
                                                     {BK4|CH8 ^paragraph 35}
  "Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"                                
  "Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who         
was downstairs.                                                             
  Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in      
the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more             
rapidly.                                                                    
  "It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be      
too extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the            
face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of         
which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman          
stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed           
and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up      
the stairs and embraced his sister.                                         
  "You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a              
reply- which he would not have received, for the princess was unable        
to speak- he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the         
doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last         
post station), and again embraced his sister.                               
                                                     {BK4|CH8 ^paragraph 40}
  "What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak      
and felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment.                  
                                                                            
BK4|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on         
her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair           
lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy             
mouth with its downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince      
Andrew entered and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on             
which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear        
and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression. "I         
love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so?         
Help me!" her look seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not          
realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince           
Andrew went round the sofa and kissed her forehead.                         
  "My darling!" he said- a word he had never used to her before.            
"God is merciful...."                                                       
  She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.                
  "I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!"          
said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not        
realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her             
sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary             
Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.                         
  The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess          
Mary, again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk      
broke off at every moment. They waited and listened.                        
                                                      {BK4|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  "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?"                                                          
                                                     {BK4|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail;           
tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began        
to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his          
shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling          
jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor      
gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman            
rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the              
threshold. He went into his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the         
same position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite           
the fixed eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression was        
on her charming childlike face with its upper lip covered with tiny         
black hair.                                                                 
  "I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have           
you done to me?"- said her charming, pathetic, dead face.                   
  In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and           
squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.                        
-                                                                           
  Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his             
father's room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing         
close to the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed        
like a vise round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob        
like a child.                                                               
                                                     {BK4|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew        
went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the                
farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though            
with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to        
say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and         
that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He          
could not weep. The old man too came up and kissed the waxen little         
hands that lay quietly crossed one on the other on her breast, and          
to him, too, her face seemed to say: "Ah, what have you done to me,         
and why?" And at the sight the old man turned angrily away.                 
-                                                                           
  Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas              
Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her      
while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red         
and wrinkled soles and palms.                                               
  His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of           
dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and            
handed him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat          
in another room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in         
the font, and awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up         
joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded            
approval when she told him that the wax with the baby's hair had not        
sunk in the font but had floated.                                           
                                                                            
BK4|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the      
efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks        
as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of      
Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of         
the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties.            
Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during         
his convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him           
passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond        
of Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about        
her son.                                                                    
  "Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for         
our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like         
a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it            
honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him         
and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg      
when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it              
together? And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to          
bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go             
through! It's true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail          
to do that? I think there were not many such gallant sons of the            
fatherland out there as he. And now- this duel! Have these people no        
feeling, or honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and      
shoot so straight! It's well God had mercy on us. And what was it for?      
Who doesn't have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I        
see things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for         
months. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting           
because he owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you         
understand Fedya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond      
of you. Few people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly          
soul!"                                                                      
  Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way        
no one would have expected of him.                                          
  "I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't        
care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love        
so that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle          
if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two      
or three friends- you among them- and as for the rest I only care           
about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them        
are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I         
have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any         
women- countesses or cooks- who were not venal. I have not yet met          
that divine purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a      
one I'd give my life for her! But those!... and he made a gesture of        
contempt. "And believe me, if I still value my life it is only because      
I still hope to meet such a divine creature, who will regenerate,           
purify, and elevate me. But you don't understand it."                       
  "Oh, yes, I quite understand, "answered Rostov, who was under his         
new friend's influence.                                                     
                                                     {BK4|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter         
Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the          
winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of           
the happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas         
brought many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl      
of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening         
flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly           
amusing, now girlishly enchanting.                                          
  At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous             
atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very      
charming girls. Every young man who came to the house- seeing those         
impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own          
happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the            
fitful bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly           
prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hope-                 
experienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the            
Rostovs' household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of        
happiness.                                                                  
  Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was             
Dolokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She              
almost quarreled with her brother about him. She insisted that he           
was a bad man, and that in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right         
and Dolokhov wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and                
unnatural.                                                                  
  "There's nothing for me to understand," cried out with resolute           
self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov      
though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do         
understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything          
is calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..."                       
  "Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that         
even Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov- "you must understand         
what a soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his               
mother. What a heart!"                                                      
                                                    {BK4|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  "Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And      
do you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?"                              
  "What nonsense..."                                                        
  "I'm certain of it; you'll see."                                          
  Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care      
for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the        
question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon        
settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never        
have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time                
Dolokhov appeared.                                                          
  Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance          
at which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people      
which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya      
and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his        
glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha             
blushed when they saw his looks.                                            
                                                    {BK4|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the                
irresistible influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.        
  Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but      
he did not explain to himself what these new relations were.                
"They're always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and              
Natasha. But he was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as          
before and was less frequently at home.                                     
  In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war        
with Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders         
were given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the             
regular army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the          
militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow               
nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the Rostov family the         
whole interest of these preparations for war lay in the fact that           
Nicholas would not hear of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the        
termination of Denisov's furlough after Christmas to return with him        
to their regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his            
amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the        
greater part of his time away from home, at dinners, parties, and           
balls.                                                                      
                                                                            
BK4|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing          
he had rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he           
and Denisov were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany.             
About twenty people were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.           
  Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous         
atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at         
this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!      
That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the         
one thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.         
  Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without          
visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been             
invited, returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he         
noticed and felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also      
noticed a curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya,         
Dolokhov, and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a          
lesser degree Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have         
happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly      
sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both        
at dinner. On that same evening there was to be one of the balls            
that Iogel (the dancing master) gave for his pupils durings the             
holidays.                                                                   
  "Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He        
asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich* is also going."                             
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK4|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  *Denisov.                                                                 
-                                                                           
  "Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who        
at the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight.         
"I'm even weady to dance the pas de chale."                                 
  "If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the                  
Arkharovs; they have a party."                                              
  "And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the             
question he noticed that it should not have been put.                       
                                                    {BK4|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  "Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya,        
and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given            
Pierre at the Club dinner.                                                  
  "There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further             
confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left                 
immediately after dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the      
matter.                                                                     
  "And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I          
told you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He         
has proposed to Sonya!"                                                     
  Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late,               
something seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a        
suitable and in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless,          
orphan girl. From the point of view of the old countess and of society      
it was out of the question for her to refuse him. And therefore             
Nicholas' first feeling on hearing the news was one of anger with           
Sonya.... He tried to say, "That's capital; of course she'll forget         
her childish promises and accept the offer," but before he had time to      
say it Natasha began again.                                                 
  "And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a            
pause, "she told him she loved another."                                    
                                                    {BK4|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas.          
  "Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change      
once she has said..."                                                       
  "And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully.                     
  "Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas- don't be angry- but I        
know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know           
for certain that you won't marry her."                                      
  "Now don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to          
her. What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile.                       
                                                    {BK4|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  "Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you."                      
  And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.                              
  A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared        
look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the             
first time since his return that they had talked alone and about their      
love.                                                                       
  "Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more               
boldly, "if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and          
advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..."      
  Sonya interrupted him.                                                    
                                                    {BK4|CH11 ^paragraph 25}
  "I have already refused," she said hurriedly.                             
  "If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..."                  
  Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.      
  "Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said.                                 
  "No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to        
say it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole          
truth. I love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...."        
                                                    {BK4|CH11 ^paragraph 30}
  "That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing.                            
  "No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love      
again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,               
confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does         
not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider        
Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with             
difficulty.                                                                 
  "Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and        
always shall, and I want nothing more."                                     
  "You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of             
misleading you."                                                            
  And Nicholas again kissed her hand.                                       
                                                                            
BK4|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers      
as they watched their young people executing their newly learned            
steps, and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced         
till they were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and        
women who came to these balls with an air of condescension and found        
them most enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these              
balls. The two pretty young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and      
were married and so further increased the fame of these dances. What        
distinguished them from others was the absence of host or hostess           
and the presence of the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a             
feather and bowing according to the rules of his art, as he                 
collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was the fact that        
only those came who wished to dance and amuse themselves as girls of        
thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for the first         
time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to be,          
pretty- so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes.         
Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom Natasha, who was                  
exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas de chale, but        
at this last ball only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka,        
which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a          
ballroom in Bezukhov's house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a         
great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostov girls            
were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay.        
That evening, proud of Dolokhov's proposal, her refusal, and her            
explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled about before she left home so      
that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was                
transparently radiant with impulsive joy.                                   
  Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real      
ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with          
pink ribbons.                                                               
  Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She        
was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever      
person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.        
  "Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya.         
  Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly        
patronage at the dancers.                                                   
                                                     {BK4|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  "How sweet she is- she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov.              
  "Who?"                                                                    
  "Countess Natasha," answered Denisov.                                     
  "And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause.            
  "Who are you talking about?"                                              
                                                    {BK4|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  "About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily.                          
  Rostov smiled.                                                            
  "My dear count, you were one of my best pupils- you must dance,"          
said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young      
ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a          
former pupil of his.                                                        
  "No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you      
wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?"                             
  "Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only            
inattentive, but you had talent- oh yes, you had talent!"                   
                                                    {BK4|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
   The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not      
refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old          
ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot,            
told them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the        
young people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best            
pupil, were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with         
his little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with         
Natasha, who, though shy, went on carefully executing her steps.            
Denisov did not take his eyes off her and beat time with his saber          
in a way that clearly indicated that if he was not dancing it was           
because he would not and not because he could not. In the middle of         
a figure he beckoned to Rostov who was passing:                             
  "This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish             
mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly."                            
  Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the              
masterly way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to             
Natasha:                                                                    
  "Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said.          
  When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and,         
tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran          
timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was         
looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing          
though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.                            
                                                    {BK4|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"                 
  "Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied.                           
  "Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas.                                         
  "They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly.         
  "I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha.                        
                                                    {BK4|CH12 ^paragraph 25}
  "Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he        
unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his         
partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,          
waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was             
Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow        
he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked             
sideways at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly           
stamped with one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew         
round the room taking his partner with him. He glided silently on           
one foot half across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs         
was dashing straight at them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and         
spreading out his legs, he stopped short on his heels, stood so a           
second, stamped on the spot clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round,      
and, striking his left heel against his right, flew round again in a        
circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself to      
him followed his lead hardly knowing how. First he spun her round,          
holding her now with his left, now with his right hand, then falling        
on one knee he twirled her round him, and again jumping up, dashed          
so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would rush through           
the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he                
suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When          
at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair,          
he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not      
even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement,             
smiling as if she did not recognize him.                                    
  "What does this mean?" she brought out.                                   
  Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka,           
everyone was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and         
again as a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about           
Poland and the good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and        
mopping himself with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not      
leave her for the rest of the evening.                                      
                                                                            
BK4|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at      
Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him:              
-                                                                           
  As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know         
of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell              
supper tonight to my friends- come to the English Hotel.                    
-                                                                           
  About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the      
theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once      
shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening.          
Some twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat           
between two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper              
money, and he was keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since           
his proposal and Sonya's refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought      
of how they would meet.                                                     
                                                     {BK4|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the        
door, as though he had long expected him.                                   
  "It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll        
just finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus."          
  "I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening.           
  Dolokhov made no reply.                                                   
  "You may punt," he said.                                                  
                                                    {BK4|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once         
had with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov         
had then said.                                                              
  "Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if             
guessing Rostov's thought.                                                  
  Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the          
Club dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he        
had felt a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually              
cruel, action.                                                              
  Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke          
with which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought          
of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and        
deliberately so that everyone could hear:                                   
  "Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who            
trusts to luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try."               
                                                    {BK4|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself.                 
  "Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new        
pack of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!"                                      
  Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his      
side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him.              
  "Why don't you play?" he asked.                                           
  And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up         
a card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.                 
                                                    {BK4|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "I have no money with me," he said.                                       
  "I'll trust you."                                                         
  Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and           
again lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's         
running.                                                                    
  "Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please      
place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning."       
  One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.                     
                                                    {BK4|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  "Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I      
ask you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't           
stint yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov.      
  The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.                
  All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles            
scored up against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while           
the waiter filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to           
his usual stake of twenty rubles.                                           
  "Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking      
at Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others         
but win from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again.                 
  Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a         
seven of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the         
floor. He well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the           
seven of hearts, on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written         
"800 rubles" in clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm         
champagne that was handed him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with         
a sinking heart, waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's        
hands which held the pack. Much depended on Rostov's winning or losing      
on that seven of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had           
given his son two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked            
speaking of money difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all          
he could let him have till May, and asked him to be more economical         
this time. Nicholas had replied that it would be more than enough           
for him and that he gave his word of honor not to take anything more        
till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left of that            
money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the loss of      
sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his word.        
With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now          
then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap and         
drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will             
certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life,          
jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with         
his father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the                
Povarskaya rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm        
that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss,            
long past. He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the          
seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left, might deprive him      
of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly illumined, and           
plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined misery. That could      
not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's      
hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy wrists visible from           
under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took up a glass and a         
pipe that were handed him.                                                  
                                                    {BK4|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  "So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as        
if about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in         
his chair, and began deliberately with a smile:                             
  "Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow        
that I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."                         
  "Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.                                       
  "Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the             
cards with a smile.                                                         
  "Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The         
seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He         
had lost more than he could pay.                                            
                                                    {BK4|CH13 ^paragraph 35}
  "Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at         
Rostov as he continued to deal.                                             
                                                                            
BK4|CH14                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  An hour and a half later most of the players were but little              
interested in their own play.                                               
  The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen         
hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,          
which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he               
vaguely supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it        
already exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer             
listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement of        
Rostov's hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against         
him. He had decided to play until that score reached forty-three            
thousand. He had fixed on that number because forty-three was the           
sum of his and Sonya's joint ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both         
hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with      
spilled wine, and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did        
not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy              
wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he           
loved and hated, held him in their power.                                   
  "Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's           
impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or      
quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov            
pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to          
accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him,           
and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at        
the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came          
first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him,        
now counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and      
tried staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round           
for aid from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of           
Dolokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind.                    
  "He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my          
ruin. Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his           
fault. What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault        
either," he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I          
killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a             
terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago         
I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to        
buy that casket for Mamma's name day and then going home. I was so          
happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I          
was! When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of things      
begin? What marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place        
at this table, chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned        
agile hands in the same way. When did it happen and what has happened?      
I am well and strong and still the same and in the same place. No,          
it can't be! Surely it will all end in nothing!"                            
  He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not        
hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its          
helpless efforts to seem calm.                                              
                                                     {BK4|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three              
thousand. Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of         
which he meant to double the three thousand just put down to his            
score, when Dolokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside         
and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the        
chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.                     
  "Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!"                 
  Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold             
outside and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas               
understood that it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:        
  "Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it        
were the fun of the game which interested him most.                         
  "It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my brain-      
that's all that's left me! " And at the same time he said in a              
cheerful voice:                                                             
                                                    {BK4|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  "Come now, just this one more little card!"                               
  "All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All            
right! Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure                  
twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three         
thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov                  
submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead of the six          
thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.                       
  "It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether           
you will let me win this ten, or beat it."                                  
  Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that         
moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy               
wrists, which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.              
  "You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching      
himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so              
long," he added.                                                            
                                                    {BK4|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov.                                        
  Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for           
him to jest.                                                                
  "When am I to receive the money, Count?"                                  
  Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.                       
  "I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said.      
                                                    {BK4|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  "I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas      
straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at      
cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know."                           
  "Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power,"               
thought Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father         
and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be      
to escape it all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him        
from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a        
cat does with a mouse.                                                      
  "Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted        
him.                                                                        
  "My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to          
mention her!" he exclaimed fiercely.                                        
  "Then when am I to have it?"                                              
                                                    {BK4|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  "Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room.                             
                                                                            
BK4|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult,         
but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father,         
confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word          
of honor, was terrible.                                                     
  At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after            
returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round           
the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that        
poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household that          
winter and, now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed          
to have grown thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a      
thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had         
worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing      
by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with           
Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return      
of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old                   
gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and      
ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short          
fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with         
his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called "Enchantress,"         
which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:             
-                                                                           
     Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre                                  
     What magic power is this recalls me still?                             
                                                     {BK4|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
     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 gazing with his             
sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.             
  "Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse, she             
said, without noticing Nicholas.                                            
  "Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas,                
glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother            
with the old lady.                                                          
                                                    {BK4|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  "Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.              
  "Is Papa at home?" he asked.                                              
  "I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We      
are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my      
sake! Did you know?"                                                        
  "No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.                                   
  "Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old                
countess from the drawing room.                                             
                                                    {BK4|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently          
at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the         
dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to      
persuade Natasha to sing.                                                   
  "All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making             
excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla- I entweat you!"         
  The countess glanced at her silent son.                                   
  "What is the matter?" she asked.                                          
  "Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the        
same question. "Will Papa be back soon?"                                    
                                                    {BK4|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  "I expect so."                                                            
  "Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it!             
Where am I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing        
room where the clavichord stood.                                            
  Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to               
Denisov's favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing.               
Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.                            
  Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.                               
  "Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's             
nothing to be happy about!" thought he.                                     
                                                    {BK4|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.                              
  "My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my             
brain is the only thing left me- not singing! " his thoughts ran on.        
"Go away? But where to? It's one- let them sing!"                           
  He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the        
girls and avoiding their eyes.                                              
  "Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to      
ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.                
  Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct,      
had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed      
it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from        
sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself      
as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my               
enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to      
herself: "No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as         
I am."                                                                      
                                                    {BK4|CH15 ^paragraph 30}
  "Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room,             
where she considered the resonance was best.                                
  Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as              
ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her      
toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.                    
  "Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with         
which Denisov followed her.                                                 
  "And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his      
sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"                                   
  Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her      
eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her                
surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may      
produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which             
leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill      
you and make you weep.                                                      
                                                    {BK4|CH15 ^paragraph 35}
  Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing                
seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She          
no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that          
comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before;           
but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her        
said: "It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be          
trained." Only they generally said this some time after she had             
finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect            
breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs      
said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In      
her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her         
own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled      
with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that        
voice could be altered without spoiling it.                                 
  "What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely            
opened eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And      
suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the            
next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided         
into three beats: "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one,      
two, three... One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three...        
One. "Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this         
misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor- it's all             
nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest!      
Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank         
God!" And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si        
he sung a second, a third below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did      
I really take it? How fortunate!" he thought.                               
  Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was         
finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from                  
everything else in the world and above everything in the world.             
"What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All                 
nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy..."                       
                                                                            
BK4|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he         
did that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than        
reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and         
went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old         
count came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing      
him drive up, went to meet him.                                             
  "Well- had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and            
proudly at his son.                                                         
  Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into      
sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's          
condition.                                                                  
  "Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and            
last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him            
feel ashamed feel of himself, he said, as if merely asking his              
father to let him have the carriage to drive to town:                       
  "Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting.      
I need some money."                                                         
                                                     {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                                                     
                                                    {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                                                      
                                                    {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and        
daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to        
her mother, quite excited.                                                  
  "Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..."                                   
  "Made what?"                                                              
  "Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed.                    
  The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To           
whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing      
with dolls and who was still having lessons.                                
                                                    {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke.          
  "Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha               
indignantly. "I come to ask you what to do, and you call it                 
'nonsense!'"                                                                
  The countess shrugged her shoulders.                                      
  "If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell           
him he is a fool, that's all!"                                              
  "No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.         
                                                    {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                                  
                                                    {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 30}
  "No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very         
well for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have      
seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out      
accidently."                                                                
  "Well, all the same, you must refuse him."                                
  "No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice."                     
  "Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married,"      
answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.                            
  "No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say         
it."                                                                        
                                                    {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 35}
  "And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,"        
said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this      
little Natasha as grown up.                                                 
  "No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen        
at the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing        
hall, where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord         
with his face in his hands.                                                 
  He jumped up at the sound of her light step.                              
  "Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my         
fate. It is in your hands."                                                 
  "Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so             
nice... but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall              
always love you."                                                           
                                                    {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 40}
  Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did           
not understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this              
instant, they heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She            
came up to them.                                                            
  "Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an           
embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov- "but my             
daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you           
would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would           
not have obliged me to give this refusal."                                  
  "Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He      
tried to say more, but faltered.                                            
  Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She           
began to sob aloud.                                                         
  "Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice,      
"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I        
would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and            
seeing her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing         
her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without             
looking at Natasha.                                                         
                                                    {BK4|CH16 ^paragraph 45}
-                                                                           
  Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay another day          
in Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell                 
entertainment at the gypsies', with the result that he had no               
recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three          
stages of his journey.                                                      
  After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow,      
without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could      
not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room.        
  Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she      
wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her        
love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of      
her.                                                                        
  He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at          
last sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and                
received his receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking        
leave of any of his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which           
was already in Poland.                                                      
                                                                            
BK5                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                              BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07                          
                                                                            
BK5|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the      
Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster         
would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,      
he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big      
feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.                 
  "Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and      
tea?" asked his valet.                                                      
  Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had      
begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same      
question- one so important that he took no notice of what went on           
around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to             
Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at         
this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it         
was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours      
or for the rest of his life.                                                
  The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling          
Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without      
changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his              
spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could          
go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed            
him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day          
he returned from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that first          
agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey,        
they seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about,        
he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve         
and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the      
chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the         
screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the         
same place.                                                                 
  The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his                  
excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let      
his excellency have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying      
and only wanted to get more money from the traveler.                        
                                                      {BK5|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  "Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad      
for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he          
needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a          
thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses.           
But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as         
possible. And I," continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I                
considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they          
considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who         
executed him- also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What         
should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am          
I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?"                
  There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and            
that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer        
was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease        
asking." But dying was also dreadful.                                       
  The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering           
her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of      
rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered         
cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want           
the money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to               
happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me        
less a prey to evil and death?- death which ends all and must come          
today or tomorrow- at any rate, in an instant as compared with              
eternity." And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread,         
and again it turned uselessly in the same place.                            
  His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters,          
by Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous      
struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her      
seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put            
into her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife- as she        
once was- did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has          
been found out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself.          
"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of          
human wisdom."                                                              
  Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and          
repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre      
found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.                                   
                                                     {BK5|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  "I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this             
gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another      
traveler, also detained for lack of horses.                                 
  The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old         
man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite      
grayish color.                                                              
  Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a           
bed that had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the           
newcomer, who, with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off         
his wraps with the aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With      
a pair of felt boots on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn,          
nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa,         
leaned back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped           
hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating            
expression of that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to           
the stranger, but by the time he had made up his mind to ask him a          
question about the roads, the traveler had closed his eyes. His             
shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of them            
Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a            
death's head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as      
it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant      
was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,             
evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never              
grown. This active old servant was unpacking the traveler's canteen         
and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything         
was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled         
a tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to         
whom he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the      
need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with            
this stranger.                                                              
  The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down,* with an         
unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be        
wanted.                                                                     
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK5|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  *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.                                        
                                                                            
BK5|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  "I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not            
mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.                
  Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.        
  "I have heard of you, my dear sir, "continued the stranger, "and          
of your misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to         
say- "Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what            
happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune."- "I regret it very             
much, my dear sir."                                                         
  Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed,         
bent forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.              
  "I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but           
for greater reasons."                                                       
                                                      {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa          
by way of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt         
reluctant to enter into conversation with this old man, but,                
submitting to him involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.           
  "You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are          
young and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my          
power."                                                                     
  "Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful          
to you. Where are you traveling from?"                                      
  The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but      
in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were      
irresistibly attractive to Pierre.                                          
  "But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said           
the old man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an           
unexpected and tenderly paternal way.                                       
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  "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."                                            
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  "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."             
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                           
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 25}
  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."                            
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 30}
  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.                                              
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 35}
  "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.                                                                
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 40}
  "How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre.              
  "The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will         
you not rest here?"                                                         
  "No, tell them to harness."                                               
  "Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me      
all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with         
downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at      
the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a                    
contemptible and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not      
want to," thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he          
wished to, could disclose it to me."                                        
  Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The          
traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began          
fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and        
said in a tone of indifferent politeness:                                   
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 45}
  "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."                                                   
                                                     {BK5|CH2 ^paragraph 50}
  The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the        
postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons        
and Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he           
had gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and         
down the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous        
sense of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful,                   
irreproachable, virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It              
seemed to him that he had been vicious only because he had somehow          
forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not a trace of his former          
doubts remained in his soul. He firmly believed in the possibility          
of the brotherhood of men united in the aim of supporting one               
another in the path of virtue, and that is how Freemasonry presented        
itself to him.                                                              
                                                                            
BK5|CH3                                                                     
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his              
arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a           
Kempis, whose book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing          
he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto             
unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining                
perfection, and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men,      
which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him. A week after his arrival,      
the young Polish count, Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in        
Petersburg society, came into his room one evening in the official and      
ceremonious manner in which Dolokhov's second had called on him,            
and, having closed the door behind him and satisfied himself that           
there was nobody else in the room, addressed Pierre.                        
  "I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said          
without sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our                
Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order      
before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I          
consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish      
to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?"               
   The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always            
before met at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most             
brilliant women, surprised Pierre.                                          
  "Yes, I do wish it," said he.                                             
  Willarski bowed his head.                                                 
                                                      {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  "One more question, Count," he said, "which beg you to answer in all      
sincerity- not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you             
renounced your former convictions- do you believe in God?"                  
  Pierre considered.                                                        
  "Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said.                                  
  "In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.            
  "Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated.                                  
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                        
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he      
shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if wishing to          
take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his         
eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs           
almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He                 
experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of         
what would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He      
felt curious to know what was going to happen and what would be             
revealed to him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had        
come when he would at last start on that path of regeneration and on        
the actively virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he           
met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took      
the bandage off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black      
darkness, only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre      
went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which           
lay an open book. The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with         
the lamp inside was a human skull with its cavities and teeth. After        
reading the first words of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the            
Word and the Word was with God," Pierre went round the table and saw a      
large open box filled with something. It was a coffin with bones            
inside. He was not at all surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on      
an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he expected                  
everything to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was seeing. A      
skull, a coffin, the Gospel- it seemed to him that he had expected all      
this and even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around.      
"God, death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself,      
associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened        
and someone came in.                                                        
  By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed,          
he saw rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the      
darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the         
table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.                      
  This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his             
chest and part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which        
rose a high white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit      
up from below.                                                              
  "For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in           
Pierre's direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have         
you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not          
seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,        
enlightenment?"                                                             
  At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre            
felt a sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his        
boyhood at confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially      
a complete stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man.      
With bated breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by          
which name the brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the          
Brotherhood was known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor         
a man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the          
newcomer was an acquaintance- he wished him simply a brother and a          
virtuous instructor. For a long time he could not utter a word, so          
that the Rhetor had to repeat his question.                                 
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  "Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with               
difficulty.                                                                 
  "Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any         
idea of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach            
your aim?" said he quietly and quickly.                                     
  "I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre,      
with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his          
excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in        
Russian.                                                                    
  "What is your conception of Freemasonry?"                                 
  "I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men         
who have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the                
inadequacy of his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he              
spoke. "I imagine..."                                                       
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                                 
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 30}
  "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."                                                                 
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 35}
  "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.                                                  
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 40}
  "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."                            
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 45}
  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.                                           
                                                     {BK5|CH3 ^paragraph 50}
  "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.        
                                                                            
BK5|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre,         
not the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized          
by his voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his                  
resolution Pierre replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming,         
childlike smile, his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and             
timidly in one slippered and one booted foot, he advanced, while            
Willarski held a sword to his bare chest. He was conducted from that        
room along passages that turned backwards and forwards and was at last      
brought to the doors of the Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was                
answered by the Masonic knock with mallets, the doors opened before         
them. A bass voice (Pierre was still blindfold) questioned him as to        
who he was, when and where he was born, and so on. Then he was again        
led somewhere still blindfold, and as they went along he was told           
allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of           
the Eternal Architect of the universe, and of the courage with which        
he should endure toils and dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre         
noticed that he was spoken of now as the "Seeker," now as the               
"Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant," to the accompaniment of             
various knockings with mallets and swords. As he was being led up to        
some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his               
conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of      
them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet. After          
that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told him to      
hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand and to      
repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the laws of      
the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit lighted,      
as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now see the      
lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the faint          
light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men         
standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding           
swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man         
whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved      
forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce           
it. But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once              
blindfolded again.                                                          
  "Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the          
candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light;        
the bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said                 
together: "Sic transit gloria mundi."                                       
  Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the         
room and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black         
sat some twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some        
of them Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair      
sat a young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from         
his neck. On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at          
Anna Pavlovna's two years before. There were also present a very            
distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the      
Kuragins'. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words          
of the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was      
a star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet            
with various figures worked upon it, at the other was something             
resembling an altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it          
stood seven large candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the      
brothers led Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet at right               
angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he must prostrate himself        
at the Gates of the Temple.                                                 
  "He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers.        
  "Oh, hush, please!" said another.                                         
                                                      {BK5|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                      
                                                     {BK5|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                              
                                                                            
BK5|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was             
sitting at home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance        
of the Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things,      
a third physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now         
and then his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he         
formed in imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at        
the Lodge, he had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the            
Emperor and that it would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre      
proposed going to his estates in the south and there attending to           
the welfare of his serfs. He was joyfully planning this new life, when      
Prince Vasili suddenly entered the room.                                    
  "My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you         
quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said            
Prince Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you      
positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was              
before the Jews."                                                           
  Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him.             
  "And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I          
know all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as          
becomes a man values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go        
into that. But consider the position in which you are placing her           
and me in the eyes of society, and even of the court," he added,            
lowering his voice. "She is living in Moscow and you are here.              
Remember, dear boy," and he drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply      
a misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her      
a letter at once, and she'll come here and all will be explained, or        
else, my dear boy, let me tell you it's quite likely you'll have to         
suffer for it."                                                             
  Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.                             
                                                      {BK5|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  "I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a        
keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to         
Helene."                                                                    
  Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili      
did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to        
speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he           
had firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words        
of the Masonic statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him.        
He blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with            
himself to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life- to         
say an unpleasant thing to a man's face, to say what the other,             
whoever he might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to        
Prince Vasili's tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he             
would be unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what          
he said now his future depended- whether he would follow the same           
old road, or that new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on      
which he firmly believed he would be reborn to a new life.                  
  "Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and            
I'll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf."                
  But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre,         
without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his      
father, muttered in a whisper:                                              
  "Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up         
and opened the door for him.                                                
                                                     {BK5|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of          
confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face.              
  "What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"                                
  "Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go           
without receiving any explanation.                                          
  A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the          
Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went            
away to his estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and      
Odessa Masons and promised to write to him and guide him in his new         
activity.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK5|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite          
of the Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the         
principals nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the          
duel, confirmed by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of          
society. Pierre who had been regarded with patronizing condescension        
when he was an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was        
the best match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society         
after his marriage- when the marriageable daughters and their               
mothers had nothing to hope from him- especially as he did not know         
how, and did not wish, to court society's favor. Now he alone was           
blamed for what had happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and        
subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after        
Pierre's departure Helene returned to Petersburg, she was received          
by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade          
of deference due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her         
husband Helene assumed a dignified expression, which with                   
characteristic tact she had acquired though she did not understand its      
significance. This expression suggested that she had resolved to            
endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her husband was a cross        
laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion more openly.      
He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was mentioned and, pointing to        
his forehead, remarked:                                                     
  "A bit touched- I always said so."                                        
  "I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre,      
"I said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her            
priority) "that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved        
ideas of these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was          
in raptures about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and           
when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my             
soirees. And how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then        
and foretold all that has happened."                                        
  Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of         
soirees as before- such as she alone had the gift of arranging- at          
which was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom          
of the intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it.          
Besides this refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions        
were also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new      
and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the        
state of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court           
society so dearly and distinctly indicated.                                 
  Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's            
destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the              
surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when        
our troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with              
Napoleon was beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The          
"cream of really good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene,         
forsaken by her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte         
who had just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a        
young man referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit"        
(un homme de beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor           
and her mother, and several other less noteworthy persons.                  
                                                      {BK5|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening      
was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from      
the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.       
  The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company         
that evening was this:                                                      
  "Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to                
countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance        
and mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not      
cease to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say        
to the King Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as         
voulu, George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!"                 
  When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the            
drawing room, almost all the company had assembled, and the                 
conversation, guided by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic             
relations with Austria and the hope of an alliance with her.                
  Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and                       
self-possessed, entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the           
uniform of an aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his                
respects to the aunt and then brought back to the general circle.           
                                                     {BK5|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him      
to several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered             
description of each.                                                        
  "Prince Hippolyte Kuragin _________ charming young fellow; M. Kronq-      
charge d'affaires from Copenhagen- a profound intellect," and               
simply, "Mr. Shitov- a man of great merit"- this of the man usually so      
described.                                                                  
  Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the             
peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his          
service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a      
very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to      
Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He        
had become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which        
he had been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign           
might rank incomparably higher than a general, and according to             
which what was needed for success in the service was not effort or          
work, or courage, or perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to         
get on with those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often           
surprised at the rapidity of his success and at the inability of            
others to understand these things. In consequence of this discovery         
his whole manner of life, all his relations with old friends, all           
his plans for his future, were completely altered. He was not rich,         
but would spend his last groat to be better dressed than others, and        
would rather deprive himself of many pleasures than allow himself to        
be seen in a shabby equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in      
an old uniform. He made friends with and sought the acquaintance of         
only those above him in position and who could therefore be of use          
to him. He liked Petersburg and despised Moscow. The remembrance of         
the Rostovs' house and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant      
to him and he had not once been to see the Rostovs since the day of         
his departure for the army. To be in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room he        
considered an important step up in the service, and he at once              
understood his role, letting his hostess make use of whatever interest      
he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned each face, appraising         
the possibilities of establishing intimacy with each of those present,      
and the advantages that might accrue. He took the seat indicated to         
him beside the fair Helene and listened to the general conversation.        
  "Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable        
that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure         
them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the         
actual phrase used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge           
d'affaires.                                                                 
  "The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect,"          
with a subtle smile.                                                        
                                                     {BK5|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  "We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of        
Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have            
thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it."              
  "Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some          
reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined              
French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing          
with a Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere."*          
-                                                                           
  *"Europe will never be our sincere ally."                                 
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK5|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the        
King of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation.              
  Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his          
turn, but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his                 
neighbor, the beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those          
of the handsome young aide-de-camp with a smile.                            
  Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally         
asked Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state      
he found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told         
them in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies      
and the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of           
his own about the facts he was recounting. For some time he                 
engrossed the general attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the            
novelty she had served up was received with pleasure by all her             
visitors. The greatest attention of all to Boris' narrative was             
shown by Helene. She asked him several questions about his journey and      
seemed greatly interested in the state of the Prussian army. As soon        
as he had finished she turned to him with her usual smile.                  
  "You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that            
implied that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this         
was absolutely necessary.                                                   
  "On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure."      
                                                     {BK5|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a               
conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the            
pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.                                   
  "You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her        
eyes and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is            
such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before            
her- please don't! It is too painful for her!"                              
                                                                            
BK5|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte      
had the ear of the company.                                                 
  Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and          
having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.                       
  "Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again                 
laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna         
Pavlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to         
say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious                 
Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.                      
  "It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but        
Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and         
again, as soon as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and        
said no more.                                                               
  Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed           
him firmly.                                                                 
                                                      {BK5|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  "Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?"                                
  Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.                              
  "Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a        
joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that           
evening to get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight         
pour le Roi de Prusse!"                                                     
  Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or      
appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody          
laughed.                                                                    
  "Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna,        
shaking her little shriveled finger at him.                                 
                                                     {BK5|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "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."                      
                                                     {BK5|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "It's impossible," replied another.                                       
  "Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...."         
  When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all the      
evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing            
significant command to come to her on Tuesday.                              
  "It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile         
toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile            
with which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's           
wish.                                                                       
  It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening             
about the Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see      
him. She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he         
came on Tuesday.                                                            
                                                     {BK5|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon,           
Boris received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for        
him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to      
him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said                    
unexpectedly and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face:             
"Come to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!"        
  During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the           
countess' house.                                                            
                                                                            
BK5|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier.                  
Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind."           
Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and            
from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual and            
therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski,          
Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.            
  In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief      
then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout               
Russia. Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly          
noticeable since the time when he thought his son had been killed,          
he did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been             
appointed by the Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for            
action gave him new energy and strength. He was continually                 
traveling through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic        
in the fulfillment of his duties, severe to cruelty with his                
subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details         
himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in mathematics from        
her father, and when the old prince was at home went to his study with      
the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called         
him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse           
Savishna in the late princess' rooms and Princess Mary spent most of        
the day in the nursery, taking a mother's place to her little nephew        
as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed passionately         
fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself to give           
her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel- as she called         
her nephew- and playing with him.                                           
  Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over        
the tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble            
monument brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread           
wings ready to fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly              
raised as though about to smile, and once on coming out of the              
chapel Prince Andrew and Princess Mary admitted to one another that         
the angel's face reminded them strangely of the little princess. But        
what was still stranger, though of this Prince Andrew said nothing          
to his sister, was that in the expression the sculptor had happened to      
give the angel's face, Prince Andrew read the same mild reproach he         
had read on the face of his dead wife: "Ah, why have you done this          
to me?"                                                                     
  Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him         
a large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald              
Hills. Partly because of the depressing memories associated with            
Bald Hills, partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal          
to bearing with his father's peculiarities, and partly because he           
needed solitude, Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building      
and spent most of his time there.                                           
  After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved           
not to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and      
everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the              
recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his           
son seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old        
man, roused by activity, expected the best results from the new             
campaign, while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the        
war and secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.                   
                                                      {BK5|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.      
Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's           
absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman        
who had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and          
letters for Prince Andrew.                                                  
  Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the         
letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there.          
He was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.                        
  "If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some                
papers," said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting        
on a child's little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he      
poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of           
water.                                                                      
  "What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking                      
unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the      
mixture onto the floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought      
it.                                                                         
  There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a         
table, a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew         
was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was               
burning on the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light      
did not fall on the cot.                                                    
                                                     {BK5|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.            
                                                     {BK5|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said        
Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had      
prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was             
calling him in a whisper.                                                   
  It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the      
boy who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their             
household doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town,      
they had been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by         
sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one          
another and reproached and disputed with each other.                        
  "Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the           
maid.                                                                       
  Prince Andrew went out.                                                   
  "Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal         
instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his      
father's letter, he returned to the nursery.                                
                                                     {BK5|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "Well?" he asked.                                                         
  "Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says        
that sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary        
with a sigh.                                                                
  Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.      
  "Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the          
drops and again went up to the cot.                                         
  "Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary.                                      
                                                     {BK5|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  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:                                                                    
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK5|CH8 ^paragraph 30}
  Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful           
news- if it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete        
victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing,      
and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a            
German- I congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at          
Korchevo- a certain Khandrikov- is up to; till now the additional           
men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say      
I'll have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have            
received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from              
Petenka- he took part in it- and it's all true. When mischief-makers        
don't meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be               
fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without          
delay and carry out instructions!                                           
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It           
was a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded          
it up without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with        
the words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!"             
  "No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought         
he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.                         
  Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the           
baby.                                                                       
                                                     {BK5|CH8 ^paragraph 35}
  "Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince      
Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a               
victory over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's           
always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading        
Bilibin's letter which was written in French. He read without               
understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment,         
what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of      
all else.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK5|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and        
though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms,          
he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and            
self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation          
of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in         
Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the        
bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the      
army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at          
Preussisch-Eylau.                                                           
  "Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote             
Bilibin, "as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I        
have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for         
me; what I have seen during these last three months is incredible.          
  "I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks      
the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only          
betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it      
turns out that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our            
fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the          
Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had            
begun, and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and      
installs himself in the palace at Potsdam.                                  
  "'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to                  
Bonaparte, 'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my          
palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as                  
circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that            
end. May I have succeeded!' The Prussian generals pride themselves          
on being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first          
demand.                                                                     
  "The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the      
King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender....         
All this is absolutely true.                                                
                                                      {BK5|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  "In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude,      
it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more,        
in war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have      
everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,      
a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success      
might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so        
young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and          
Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,                 
Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy        
and triumph.                                                                
  "On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails         
are taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything        
himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those             
meant for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters              
addressed to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field            
marshal grows impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters          
from the Emperor to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts         
into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything,           
seizes the letters, opens them, and reads those from the Emperor            
addressed to others. 'Ah! So that's the way they treat me! No               
confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep an eye on me! Very well then!         
Get along with you!' So he writes the famous order of the day to            
General Bennigsen:                                                          
  'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the         
army. You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it          
is exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done,          
and, as you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must        
think of retreating to our frontier- which do today.'                       
  "'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a            
saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite             
prevents my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on      
the command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden,              
having sent him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising         
him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior          
of Prussia, for only one day's ration of bread remains, and in some         
regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders,              
Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had has been           
eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I             
recover. In regard to which I humbly submit my report, with the             
information that if the army remains in its present bivouac another         
fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring.             
  "'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is          
already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great         
and glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most          
gracious permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play           
the part of a secretary rather than commander in the army. My               
removal from the army does not produce the slightest stir- a blind man      
has left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.'                      
                                                     {BK5|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  "The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,      
isn't it logical?                                                           
  "This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly      
interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it        
appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.         
Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen         
does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who      
are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the                
opportunity to fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He      
does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great         
victory but in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as         
you know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won          
or lost. Those who retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say;      
and according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In           
short, we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg         
with news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive            
from Petersburg the post of commander in chief as a reward for his          
victory, does not give up the command of the army to General                
Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a very original and             
interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should         
be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General               
Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So                 
energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an                  
unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our         
enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General            
Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a superior enemy             
force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to              
escape him. Buxhowden pursues us- we scuttle. He hardly crosses the         
river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy.        
Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the         
result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on           
Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the         
news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our           
appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is         
vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But      
as it turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us-         
namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat,         
biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads              
impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last      
campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form bands and scour      
the countryside and put everything to fire and sword. The                   
inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick,           
and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our               
headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to      
disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty        
portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all          
commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much            
fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other."                
  At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while,        
in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust          
Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When        
he had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away.          
It was not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life      
out there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his        
eyes, rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what      
he had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly      
he thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized         
with alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he        
was reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and           
opened it.                                                                  
  Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from        
him with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the          
cot.                                                                        
  "My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind      
him.                                                                        
                                                     {BK5|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  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."                                            
                                                     {BK5|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  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.            
                                                                            
BK5|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went          
to the Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs,            
taking with him full directions which he had written down for his           
own guidance as to what he should do on his estates.                        
  When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office      
and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that          
steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs- and that till then      
they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their      
babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to           
the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and          
hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the           
estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among        
them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the           
young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of        
money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp           
and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed          
hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them,              
including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they           
could best handle the master for their own ends.                            
  The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions,      
but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go         
into the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.          
  Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into          
an income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a        
year, Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him      
an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the         
following budget:                                                           
  About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank,        
about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town        
house, and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was          
given in pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was      
sent to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on debts. The           
building of a new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in        
each of the last two years, and he did not know how the rest, about         
100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every year he was obliged to          
borrow. Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling him of      
fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories         
and workshops. So the first task Pierre had to face was one for             
which he had very little aptitude or inclination- practical business.       
                                                     {BK5|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he      
felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these           
consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with      
them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the          
state of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the            
necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new activities            
with serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand,          
Pierre demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs,           
which the steward met by showing the necessity of first paying off the      
loans from the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of a speedy      
emancipation.                                                               
  The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested            
selling the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down        
the river, and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all        
of which operations according to him were connected with such               
complicated measures- the removal of injunctions, petitions,                
permits, and so on- that Pierre became quite bewildered and only            
replied:                                                                    
  "Yes, yes, do so."                                                        
  Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled      
him to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only        
tried to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The            
steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he                  
considered these consultations very valuable for the proprietor and         
troublesome to himself.                                                     
  In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened          
to make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer,           
the largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's              
greatest weakness- the one to which he had confessed when admitted          
to the Lodge- were so strong that he could not resist them. Again           
whole days, weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush         
and were as much occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches,           
and balls, giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg.             
Instead of the new life he had hoped to lead he still lived the old         
life, only in new surroundings.                                             
                                                    {BK5|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                              
                                                    {BK5|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  "How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,"         
thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!"                    
  He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at          
receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do      
for these simple, kindly people.                                            
  The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly        
through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with         
a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,        
pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above         
all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it        
was.                                                                        
  Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be        
difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would      
happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though                 
reluctantly, on what he thought right. The steward promised to do           
all in his power to carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly            
that not only would the count never be able to find out whether all         
measures had been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to         
release them from the Land Bank, but would probably never even inquire      
and would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing         
empty and that the serfs continued to give in money and work all            
that other people's serfs gave- that is to say, all that could be           
got out of them.                                                            
                                                                            
BK5|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest           
state of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of           
visiting his friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years.          
  Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among         
fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The        
house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and        
with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that         
stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which         
were a few fir trees.                                                       
  The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables,         
a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade      
still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly         
laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps           
and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were            
straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore        
an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre      
met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a      
small newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked      
after Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage,      
said that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little        
anteroom.                                                                   
  Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house          
after the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend        
in Petersburg.                                                              
  He quickly entered the small reception room with its                      
still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone        
farther, but Anton ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.               
                                                     {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  "Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice.                       
  "A visitor," answered Anton.                                              
  "Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed        
back.                                                                       
  Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to        
face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre      
embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek      
and looked at him closely.                                                  
  "Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew.         
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with                 
surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly         
and there was a smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and      
lifeless and in spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give        
them a joyous and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner,            
paler, and more manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre         
till he got used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow           
indicating prolonged concentration on some one thought.                     
  As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged              
separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on           
anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things            
they knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the                    
conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first               
lightly touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre's         
journeys and occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and         
despondency which Pierre had noticed in his friend's look was now           
still more clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to         
Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past          
or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to               
sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter           
began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms,         
dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew's              
presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views, which had        
been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour. He             
checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible         
desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a             
quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.         
  "I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly      
know myself again."                                                         
  "Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince           
Andrew.                                                                     
  "Well, and you? What are your plans?"                                     
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                     
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                      
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 25}
  "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!"                                  
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                                                   
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 35}
  "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."                                                                
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 40}
  "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."                
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 45}
  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."                                              
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 50}
  "But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would           
sit without moving, undertaking nothing...."                                
  "Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do            
nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me           
the honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to        
get out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary      
qualifications for it- the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness          
necessary for the position. Then there's this house, which must be          
built in order to have a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And        
now there's this recruiting."                                               
  "Why aren't you serving in the army?"                                     
  "After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very      
much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active               
Russian army. And I won't- not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk      
threatening Bald Hills- even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian           
army! Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his                  
composure, "now there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command      
of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active service is        
to serve under him."                                                        
  "Then you are serving?"                                                   
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 55}
  "I am."                                                                   
  He paused a little while.                                                 
  "And why do you serve?"                                                   
  "Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men        
of his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he         
has too energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited             
power that he is terrible, and now he has this authority of a               
commander in chief of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had      
been two hours late a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's         
clerk at Yukhnovna hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I          
am serving because I alone have any influence with my father, and           
now and then can save him from actions which would torment him              
afterwards."                                                                
  "Well, there you see!"                                                    
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 60}
  "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.                                                         
                                                    {BK5|CH11 ^paragraph 65}
  "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.                                                                     
                                                                            
BK5|CH12                                                                    
  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."                                                   
                                                     {BK5|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.             
                                                    {BK5|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                   
                                                    {BK5|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
  "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?"         
                                                    {BK5|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "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:                                                                 
                                                    {BK5|CH12 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                                           
                                                                            
BK5|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the         
front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the           
house, Prince Andrew with asmile drew Pierre's attention to a               
commotion going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a        
wallet on her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black          
garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up.      
Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking round at the            
carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch.                     
  "Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have           
mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she              
disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she           
receives them."                                                             
  "But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.                                
  Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet        
them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was              
expected back soon.                                                         
  The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any             
minute.                                                                     
                                                     {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                           
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  "Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild            
reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her            
chickens.                                                                   
  "Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir,"* she          
said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child,         
and now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife,           
and above all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward         
him. She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to        
say, "I like you very much, but please don't laugh at my people."           
After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.                        
-                                                                           
  *"Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you."                       
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a      
smile at the young pilgrim.                                                 
  "Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez      
que c'est une femme,"* said Prince Andrew to Pierre.                        
  "Andrew, au nom de Dieu!"*[2] Princess Mary repeated.                     
-                                                                           
  *"You must know that this is a woman."                                    
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  *[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'etre reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre         
intimite avec ce jeune homme."*                                             
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  *"But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for        
explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young man."                    
-                                                                           
  "Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and      
seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him)         
into Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about,         
looked round at them all with crafty eyes.                                  
  Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite           
unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman,             
lowering her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had            
turned her cup upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside         
it, and sat quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered            
another cup of tea. Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked            
with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at the young men.               
  "Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.        
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  "I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime      
I was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at        
the shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a         
great and wonderful blessing has been revealed."                            
  "And was Ivanushka with you?"                                             
  "I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a        
bass voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..."                    
  Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell          
what she had seen.                                                          
  "In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed."            
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 35}
  "What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew.                       
  "Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him,              
Pelageya."                                                                  
  "No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he      
is one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles,      
I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of         
God's own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are           
you not going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a                    
wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On        
hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went."              
  All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,        
drawing in her breath.                                                      
  "So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing           
has been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed         
Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of God'...."                                 
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 40}
  "All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess         
Mary, flushing.                                                             
  "Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he            
inquired.                                                                   
  "Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the            
face like the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek          
it drops and drops...."                                                     
  "But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who           
had listened attentively to the pilgrim.                                    
  "Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya,      
turning to Princess Mary for support.                                       
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 45}
  "They impose on the people," he repeated.                                 
  "Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing                
herself. "Oh, don't speak so, master! There was a general who did           
not believe, and said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said          
it he went blind. And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the         
Kiev catacombs came to him and said, 'Believe in me and I will make         
you whole.' So he begged: 'Take me to her, take me to her.' It's the        
real truth I'm telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought,             
quite blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and      
says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll give thee what the Tsar           
bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the star is fixed into the        
icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It's a sin        
to speak so. God will punish you," she said admonishingly, turning          
to Pierre.                                                                  
  "How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked.                       
  "And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said           
Prince Andrew, with a smile.                                                
  Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.                  
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 50}
  "Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began,      
her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you          
said? God forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My      
dear, what does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary.           
She got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She             
evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a         
house where such things could be said, and was at the same time             
sorry to have now to forgo the charity of this house.                       
  "Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come          
to me?..."                                                                  
  "Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma               
parole, je n'ai pas voulu l'offenser.* I did not mean anything, I           
was only joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his           
offense. "It was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking."                 
-                                                                           
  *"Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her."                    
                                                    {BK5|CH13 ^paragraph 55}
-                                                                           
  Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a        
look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now          
at her and now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.                 
                                                                            
BK5|CH14                                                                    
  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.           
                                                     {BK5|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.          
                                                    {BK5|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study,          
found him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining          
that a time would come when there would be no more wars. The old            
prince disputed it chaffingly, but without getting angry.                   
  "Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then          
there will be no more war! Old women's nonsense- old women's                
nonsense!" he repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on        
the shoulder, and then went up to the table where Prince Andrew,            
evidently not wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over         
the papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went up to      
him and began to talk business.                                             
  "The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He         
came to town and wanted to invite me to dinner- I gave him a pretty         
dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince        
went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A          
fine fellow- your friend- I like him! He stirs me up. Another says          
clever things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks            
rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps            
I'll come and sit with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make      
friends with my little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after               
Pierre, through the door.                                                   
  Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the        
strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm         
was not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his         
family and with the household. With the stern old prince and the            
gentle, timid Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre      
at once felt like an old friend. They were all fond of him already.         
Not only Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the         
pilgrims, gave him her most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old        
"Prince Nicholas" (as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and      
let himself be taken in his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and                 
Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him with pleasant smiles when he           
talked to the old prince.                                                   
  The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's          
account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was            
extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.                     
                                                    {BK5|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                     
                                                                            
BK5|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time,           
how close was the bond that united him to Denisov and and the whole         
regiment.                                                                   
  On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his        
home in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned            
uniform of his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and        
saw the picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully           
shouted to his master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been      
asleep on his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace         
him, and the officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov      
experienced the same feeling his mother, his father, and his sister         
had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not          
speak. The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and            
precious as his parents' house.                                             
  When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and         
had been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had        
gone out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little            
interests of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and          
bound in one narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense        
of peace, of moral support, and the same sense being at home here in        
his own place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was         
none of all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not            
know his right place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya         
with whom he ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was          
no possibility of going there or not going there; here there were           
not twenty-four hours in the day which could be spent in such a             
variety of ways; there was not that innumerable crowd of people of          
whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than another; there      
were none of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his         
father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dolokhov. Here, in      
the regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided         
into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd regiment; the other, all         
the rest. And the rest was no concern of his. In the regiment,              
everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who captain, who was a         
good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a comrade. The         
canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four months, there      
was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do nothing that         
was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order,      
to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered- and all         
would be well.                                                              
  Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this             
regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on        
lying down to rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was         
all the pleasanter for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for        
which, in spite of all his family's efforts to console him, he could        
not forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault        
by serving, not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a      
perfectly first-rate comrade and officer- in a word, a splendid man         
altogether, a thing which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so      
possible in the regiment.                                                   
  After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his           
parents in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now      
resolved to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the          
debt to his parents.                                                        
                                                     {BK5|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at             
Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It         
was awaiting the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new               
campaign.                                                                   
  The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had      
served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in          
Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of           
the campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau        
and, when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the         
campaign, was attached to Platov's division.                                
  Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several      
times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the          
enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal              
Oudinot's carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed                 
immovably for some weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German          
village.                                                                    
  A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river            
broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions         
for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no                
transports could arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and          
deserted villages, searching for potatoes, but found few even of            
these.                                                                      
  Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled- if         
any remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be        
taken from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead        
of taking anything from them, often gave them the last of their             
rations.                                                                    
                                                    {BK5|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but        
had lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the               
hospitals, death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or      
the swelling that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and      
hardly able to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the         
hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just             
showing out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for            
some reason, they called "Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter,         
but they wandered about the fields seeking it and dug it out with           
their sabers and ate it, though they were ordered not to do so, as          
it was a noxious plant. That spring a new disease broke out broke           
out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and face,             
which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite of           
all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on                 
"Mashka's sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of      
the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man         
and the last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.                     
  The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the            
thatched roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with      
tufts of felty winter hair.                                                 
  Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living        
just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms,      
the hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed        
their horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the                
thatched roofs in place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the           
caldrons from which they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food      
and their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires,         
steamed themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked          
sprouting rotten potatoes, told and listened to stories of                  
Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly,        
or the priest's laborer Mikolka.                                            
  The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,         
half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes         
and, in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied                
themselves as before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money,        
though there was no food), some with more innocent games, such as           
quoits and skittles. The general trend of the campaign was rarely           
spoken of, partly because nothing certain was known about it, partly        
because there was a vague feeling that in the main it was going badly.      
  Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they      
had become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's         
family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him,              
Rostov felt that the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a      
part in strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to          
expose Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action          
greeted his safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging            
expeditions, in a deserted and ruined village to which he had come          
in search of provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old         
Pole and his daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad,          
hungry, too weak to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a        
conveyance. Rostov brought them to his quarters, placed them in his         
own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while the old man was             
recovering. One of his comrades, talking of women, began chaffing           
Rostov, saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it           
would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the pretty Polish         
girl he had saved. Rostov took the joke as an insult, flared up, and        
said such unpleasant things to the officer that it was all Denisov          
could do to prevent a duel. When the officer had gone away, Denisov,        
who did not himself know what Rostov's relations with the Polish            
girl might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of temper, and        
Rostov replied:                                                             
                                                    {BK5|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  "Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't            
tell you how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...."        
  Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room      
without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.       
  "Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov           
noticed tears in his eyes.                                                  
                                                                            
BK5|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival,      
but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at          
Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that         
place.                                                                      
  They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth         
hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and          
turf. The hut was made in the following manner, which had then come         
into vogue. A trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet          
eight inches deep, and eight feet long. At one end of the trench,           
steps were cut out and these formed the entrance and vestibule. The         
trench itself was the room, in which the lucky ones, such as the            
squadron commander, had a board, lying on piles at the end opposite         
the entrance, to serve as a table. On each side of the trench, the          
earth was cut out to a breadth of about two and a half feet, and            
this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof was so constructed        
that one could stand up in the middle of the trench and could even sit      
up on the beds if one drew close to the table. Denisov, who was living      
luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a      
board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken but           
mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold, embers from        
the soldiers' campfire were placed on a bent sheet of iron on the           
steps in the "reception room"- as Denisov called that part of the hut-      
and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were always        
some with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.                   
  In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and      
eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers,               
changed his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got      
warm, then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner,         
and, his face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on         
but his shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his             
head. He was pleasantly considering the probability of being                
promoted in a few days for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was      
awaiting Denisov, who had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a      
talk.                                                                       
  Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the        
hut, evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he      
was speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.                     
  "I ordered you not to let them that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov           
was shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some        
fwom the fields."                                                           
                                                     {BK5|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they             
don't obey," answered the quartermaster.                                    
  Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let           
him fuss and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down- capitally!"      
He could hear that Lavrushka- that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's- was      
talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying                 
something about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when          
he had gone out for provisions.                                             
  Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.         
"Saddle! Second platoon!"                                                   
  "Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov.                              
  Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy         
boots on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things              
about, took his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again.      
In answer to Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered               
vaguely and crossly that he had some business.                              
                                                    {BK5|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov         
going out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing           
through the mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had      
gone. Having got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not             
leave the hut till toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The        
weather had cleared up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet      
were playing svayka, laughing as they threw their missiles which            
buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle        
of the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen          
hussars on their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the      
hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars                  
surrounded them.                                                            
  "There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are        
the provisions."                                                            
  "So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!"           
  A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two              
infantry officers with whom he was talking.                                 
  Rostov went to meet them.                                                 
                                                    {BK5|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  "I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man,             
evidently very angry, was saying.                                           
  "Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.               
  "You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny- seizing the               
transport of one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two        
days."                                                                      
  "And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov.                  
  "It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry             
officer, raising his voice.                                                 
                                                    {BK5|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing      
his temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not        
buzz about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the           
officers.                                                                   
  "Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not          
riding away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..."                        
  "Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and          
Denisov turned his horse on the officer.                                    
  "Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and          
turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.                   
  "A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov      
after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a      
mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.        
                                                    {BK5|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  "I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said.              
"After all, can't let our men starve."                                      
  The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an          
infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport           
was unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The        
soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared        
them with the other squadrons.                                              
  The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and               
holding his fingers spread out before his eyes said:                        
  "This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and           
won't begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff         
and settle the business there in the commissariat department and if         
possible sign a receipt for such and such stores received. If not,          
as the demand was booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a      
row and the affair may end badly."                                          
  From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the             
staff with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he        
came back to his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen        
him in. Denisov could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov          
asked what was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and        
threats in a hoarse, feeble voice.                                          
                                                    {BK5|CH16 ^paragraph 30}
  Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should           
undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor.                         
  "Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but        
I'll always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'...               
Ice..." he muttered.                                                        
  The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely               
necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken          
from his hairy arm and only then was he able to relate what had             
happened to him.                                                            
  "I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's            
quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden            
twenty miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait.              
Announce me.' Vewy well, so out comes their head chief- also took it        
into his head to lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'- 'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is         
not done by man who seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him      
who takes them to fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be                
silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then he says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the           
commissioner, but your affair will be passed on to headquarters.' I go      
to the commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do you think?         
No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that's starving us?" shouted Denisov,      
hitting the table with the fist of his newly bled arm so violently          
that the table nearly broke down and the tumblers on it jumped              
about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's starving us to death! Is         
it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his              
snout... 'Ah, what a... what...!' and I sta'ted fwashing him...             
Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried Denisov, gleeful         
and yet angry, his showing under his black mustache. "I'd have              
killed him if they hadn't taken him away!"                                  
  "But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've      
set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again."               
                                                    {BK5|CH16 ^paragraph 35}
  Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke            
calm and cheerful.                                                          
  But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and           
Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully              
showed them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental          
commander in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence.        
The adjutant told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad        
turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the      
severity with which marauding and insubordination were now regarded,        
degradation to the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.         
  The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after         
seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the             
chief quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief,         
threatened to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the          
office and given two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm          
of one of them.                                                             
  In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing,          
that he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed          
up in it, but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not          
in the least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels           
dared attack him he would give them an answer that they would not           
easily forget.                                                              
  Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew         
him too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart      
he feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was        
evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices      
from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered        
to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before        
the staff of his division to explain his violence at the                    
commissariat office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two      
Cossack regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his         
wont, rode out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A            
bullet fired by a French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of         
his leg. Perhaps at another time Denisov would not have left the            
regiment for so slight a wound, but now he took advantage of it to          
excuse himself from appearing at the staff and went into hospital.          
                                                                            
BK5|CH17                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the                  
Pavlograds did not take part, and after that an armistice was               
proclaimed. Rostov, who felt his friend's absence very much, having no      
news of him since he left and feeling very anxious about his wound and      
the progress of his affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get         
leave to visit Denisov in hospital.                                         
  The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice             
devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when        
it is so beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a           
particularly dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its        
foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken                
soldiers wandering about.                                                   
  The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window              
frames and panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a      
wooden fence that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged               
soldiers, with pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in         
the sunshine in the yard.                                                   
  Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of           
putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army          
doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian                
assistant.                                                                  
  "I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to          
Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there."                         
                                                     {BK5|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  The assistant asked some further questions.                               
  "Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed      
Rostov coming upstairs.                                                     
  "What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The          
bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a             
pesthouse, sir."                                                            
  "How so?" asked Rostov.                                                   
  "Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he         
pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have      
died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,"      
said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been      
invited here, but our allies don't like it at all."                         
                                                    {BK5|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars,      
who was wounded.                                                            
  "I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in           
charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's        
well that the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of              
coffee and some lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed.          
"Four hundred, sir, and they're always sending me fresh ones. There         
are four hundred? Eh?" he asked, turning to the assistant.                  
  The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and               
impatient for the talkative doctor to go.                                   
  "Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten."         
  "Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of             
indifference.                                                               
                                                    {BK5|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.               
  "Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.                     
  Rostov described Denisov's appearance.                                    
  "There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one      
is dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list.            
Have you got it, Makeev?"                                                   
  "Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if          
you'll step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he           
added, turning to Rostov.                                                   
                                                    {BK5|CH17 ^paragraph 20}
  "Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to      
stay here yourself."                                                        
  But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the               
assistant to show him the way.                                              
  "Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him.                   
  Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell           
was so strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and          
collect his strength before he could go on. A door opened to the            
right, and an emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in             
underclothing, limped out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked         
with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at      
the door, Rostov saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the floor      
on straw and overcoats.                                                     
  "May I go in and look?"                                                   
                                                    {BK5|CH17 ^paragraph 25}
  "What is there to see?" said the assistant.                               
  But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,      
Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had            
already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It      
was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where      
it originated.                                                              
  In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large            
windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to           
the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were           
unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were          
conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all      
looked intently at Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief,      
reproach, and envy of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of        
the room and looking through the open doors into the two adjoining          
rooms saw the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently            
around. He had not at all expected such a sight. Just before him,           
almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a            
sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his hair. The           
man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was      
purple, his eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen,        
and on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins stood         
out like cords. He was knocking the back of his head against the            
floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept repeating. Rostov          
listened and made out the word. It was "drink, drink, a drink!" Rostov      
glanced round, looking for someone who would put this man back in           
his place and bring him water.                                              
  "Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.                  
  Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from        
the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov.            
                                                    {BK5|CH17 ^paragraph 30}
  "Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and        
evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.                
  "Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov,              
pointing to the Cossack.                                                    
  "Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his      
eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not        
move.                                                                       
  "No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov,                
lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an             
intense look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the         
corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier          
as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently           
fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor on one side whispered something to      
him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed that the old man wanted to             
speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg      
bent under him, the other had been amputated above the knee. His            
neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some distance from           
him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with a snub nose.        
His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were rolled             
back. Rostov looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down his      
back.                                                                       
  "Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant.              
                                                    {BK5|CH17 ^paragraph 35}
  "And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier,           
his jaw quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men,      
not dogs."                                                                  
  "I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away- taken away at         
once," said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor."               
  "Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes         
and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of               
reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the      
room.                                                                       
                                                                            
BK5|CH18                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the                 
officers' wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood        
open. There were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers      
were lying or sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in         
hospital dressing gowns. The first person Rostov met in the                 
officers' ward was a thin little man with one arm, who was walking          
about the first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with         
a pipe between his teeth. Rostov looked at him, trying to remember          
where he had seen him before.                                               
  "See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin,        
don't you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had      
a bit cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the         
empty sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich             
Denisov? My neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted.           
"Here, here," and Tushin led him into the next room, from whence            
came sounds of several laughing voices.                                     
  "How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov,           
still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong      
in the soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those          
envious looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face      
of that young soldier with eyes rolled back.                                
  Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket,            
though it was nearly noon.                                                  
  "Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in           
the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under      
this habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling         
showed itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the                   
intonations of his voice.                                                   
                                                     {BK5|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six          
weeks after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as        
the faces of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that          
struck Rostov. What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to        
see him, and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the            
regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when Rostov           
spoke of these matters did not listen.                                      
  Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of           
the regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on      
outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was      
only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On            
Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced            
from under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission           
and the rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he         
began reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the        
stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions,        
who had gathered round Rostov- a fresh arrival from the world outside-      
gradually began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his            
answer. Rostov noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had          
already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the      
man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his            
bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin      
still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of           
the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov.                                 
  "But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best        
simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will      
now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...."               
  "Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he      
tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like          
an expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber         
I would ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging               
wobbers to book. Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've            
served the Tsar and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I      
to be degwaded?... Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is            
what I say: 'If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...'"                              
  "It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the           
point, Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to          
submit, and Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told      
you it was a bad business.                                                  
                                                    {BK5|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  "Well, let it be bad," said Denisov.                                      
  "The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and        
you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he"        
(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a         
better opportunity."                                                        
  "Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him,        
went on reading his paper.                                                  
  Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he                 
instinctively felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other             
officers was the safest, and though he would have been glad to be of        
service to Denisov. He knew his stubborn will and straightforward           
hasty temper.                                                               
  When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than        
an hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the        
day in a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades,      
who had round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their         
stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.                        
                                                    {BK5|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked             
Denisov whether he had no commission for him.                               
  "Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and      
taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where        
he had an inkpot, and sat down to write.                                    
  "It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he             
said, coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it      
was the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which           
Denisov, without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat               
officials, simply asked for pardon.                                         
  "Hand it in. It seems..."                                                 
  He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.                  
                                                                            
BK5|CH19                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state          
of Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the          
Emperor.                                                                    
  On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in      
Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom          
he was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the         
stay at Tilsit.                                                             
  "I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon,      
whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.         
  "You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling.             
  Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that          
he was being tested.                                                        
                                                     {BK5|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  "I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The         
general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.                           
  "You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.              
  Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two          
Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw                
Napoleon pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the           
river, saw the pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in           
silence in a tavern on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's           
arrival, saw both Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleon-            
reaching the raft first- stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and      
held out his hand to him, and how they both retired into the pavilion.      
Since he had begun to move in the highest circles Boris had made it         
his habit to watch attentively all that went on around him and to note      
it down. At the time of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of         
those who had come with Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and      
listened attentively to words spoken by important personages. At the        
moment the Emperors went into the pavilion he looked at his watch, and      
did not forget to look at it again when Alexander came out. The             
interview had lasted an hour and fifty-three minutes. He noted this         
down that same evening, among other facts he felt to be of historic         
importance. As the Emperor's suite was a very small one, it was a           
matter of great importance, for a man who valued his success in the         
service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this interview between the      
two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Boris felt that henceforth      
his position was fully assured. He had not only become known, but           
people had grown accustomed to him and accepted him. Twice he had           
executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the latter knew        
his face, and all those at court, far from cold-shouldering him as          
at first when they considered him a newcomer, would now have been           
surprised had he been absent.                                               
  Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski.           
Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond      
of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French           
officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and          
lunching with him and Boris.                                                
  On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski              
arranged a supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an         
aide-de-camp of Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of      
the Guard, and a page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old                  
aristocratic French family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the         
darkness to avoid being recognized in civilian dress. came to Tilsit        
and went to the lodging occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.                    
                                                    {BK5|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far         
from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and           
the French- who from being foes had suddenly become friends- that           
had taken place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte        
and the French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger,          
contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's             
Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken             
prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal.         
Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the             
road, Rostov had maintained with heat that peace was impossible             
between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov           
was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French officers        
in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he had been accustomed to see        
from quite a different point of view from the outposts of the flank.        
As soon as he noticed a French officer, who thrust his head out of the      
door, that warlike feeling of hostility which he always experienced at      
the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at the               
threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived there.              
Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet            
him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face      
on first recognizing Rostov.                                                
  "Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however,        
coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first            
impulse.                                                                    
  "I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have      
business," he said coldly.                                                  
  "No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment.        
Dans un moment je suis a vous,"* he said, answering someone who called      
him.                                                                        
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK5|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
  *"In a minute I shall be at your disposal."                               
-                                                                           
  "I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated.                                   
  The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face:           
having evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly          
took both Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes,          
looking serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by             
something, as if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it      
seemed to Rostov.                                                           
  "Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris,         
and he led him into the room where the supper table was laid and            
introduced him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian,        
but an hussar officer, and an old friend of his.                            
                                                    {BK5|CH19 ^paragraph 20}
  "Count Zhilinski- le Comte N. N.- le Capitaine S. S.," said he,           
naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed         
reluctantly, and remained silent.                                           
  Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very          
willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not        
appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the         
same pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with           
which he had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the      
Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen,            
addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter           
had probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.                             
  "No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly.                        
  Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look          
of dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a      
bad humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion        
and that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he      
alone took no part in the conversation which again became general. The      
looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he               
sitting here for?" He rose and went up to Boris.                            
  "Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk          
over my business and I'll go away."                                         
                                                    {BK5|CH19 ^paragraph 25}
  "Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and         
lie down in my room and have a rest."                                       
  "Yes, really..."                                                          
  They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without         
sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame in        
some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether,           
through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor          
on Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he           
and Boris were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not      
look Boris in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one      
leg crossed over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender      
fingers of his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the        
report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight          
into Rostov's eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this                
happened Rostov felt uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.                  
  "I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe      
in such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the        
Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in              
general, I think..."                                                        
  "So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost      
shouted, not looking Boris in the face.                                     
                                                    {BK5|CH19 ^paragraph 30}
  Boris smiled.                                                             
  "On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..."                
  At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris.                 
  "Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and           
remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long        
time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.      
                                                                            
BK5|CH20                                                                    
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on        
Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance      
as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do so,      
and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the             
following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were        
signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the          
Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of        
the First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening,           
given by a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk              
battalion. The Emperors were to be present at that banquet.                 
  Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when        
the latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and           
early next morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian               
clothes and a round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the         
French and their uniforms and at the streets and houses where the           
Russian and French Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables         
being set up and preparations made for the dinner; he saw the               
Russian and French colors draped from side to side of the streets,          
with hugh monograms A and N. In the windows of the houses also flags        
and bunting were displayed.                                                 
  "Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's        
settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave      
here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not            
without getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is            
here!" thought Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house          
where Alexander lodged.                                                     
  Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were          
assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.                
  "I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to         
hand the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really         
arrest me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand          
on whose side justice lies. He understands everything, knows                
everything. Who can be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even        
if they did arrest me for being here, what would it matter?" thought        
he, looking at an officer who was entering the house the Emperor            
occupied. "After all, people do go in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go        
in and hand the letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse for          
Drubetskoy who drives me to it!" And suddenly with a determination          
he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for the letter in his pocket         
and went straight to the house.                                             
                                                     {BK5|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
  "No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he      
thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious          
of the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall          
at his feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will      
even thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice      
is the greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying.           
And passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the      
porch of the Emperor's house.                                               
  A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right        
he saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading        
to the lower floor.                                                         
  "Whom do you want?" someone inquired.                                     
  "To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas,         
with a tremor in his voice.                                                 
  "A petition? This way, to the officer the officer on duty" (he was        
shown the door leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted."            
                                                    {BK5|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he      
was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so          
fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run           
away, but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and          
Rostov entered.                                                             
  A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high             
boots and a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on,           
standing in that room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of        
his breeches a new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that,           
for some reason, attracted Rostov's attention. This man was was             
speaking to someone in the adjoining room.                                  
  "A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing      
Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.                                       
  "What is it? A petition?"                                                 
  "What is it?" asked the person in the other room.                         
                                                    {BK5|CH20 ^paragraph 15}
  "Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces.                   
  "Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go."       
  "Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..."                              
  Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped      
him.                                                                        
  "Whom have you come from? Who are you?"                                   
                                                    {BK5|CH20 ^paragraph 20}
  "I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov.                             
  "Are you an officer?"                                                     
  "Lieutenant Count Rostov."                                                
  "What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with      
you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed         
him.                                                                        
  Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there        
were many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to      
pass.                                                                       
                                                    {BK5|CH20 ^paragraph 25}
  Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding         
himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to        
shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety      
of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was         
making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a          
familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.                          
  "What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep           
voice.                                                                      
  It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special           
favor during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the              
division in which Rostov was serving.                                       
  Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the               
kindly, jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an            
excited voice told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for        
Denisov, whom the general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the         
general shook his head gravely.                                             
  "I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter."              
                                                    {BK5|CH20 ^paragraph 30}
  Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining           
Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were             
heard on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the              
porch. The gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and         
went to their horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at                 
Austerlitz, led up the Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a            
footstep Rostov knew at once was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the        
danger of being recognized, Rostov went close to the porch, together        
with some inquisitive civilians, and again, after two years, saw those      
features he adored: that same face and same look and step, and the          
same union of majesty and mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm        
and love for his sovereign rose again in Rostov's soul in all its           
old force. In the uniform of the Preobrazhensk regiment- white              
chamois-leather breeches and high boots- and wearing a star Rostov did      
not know (it was that of the Legion d'honneur), the monarch came out        
into the porch, putting on his gloves and carrying his hat under his        
arm. He stopped and looked about him, brightening everything around by      
his glance. He spoke a few words to some of the generals, and,              
recognizing the former commander of Rostov's division, smiled and           
beckoned to him.                                                            
  All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for            
some time to the Emperor.                                                   
  The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his            
horse. Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers            
(among whom was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside        
his horse, with his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the           
cavalry general and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be           
heard by all:                                                               
  "I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than      
I," and he raised his foot to the stirrup.                                  
  The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and      
rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm,           
Rostov ran after him with the crowd.                                        
                                                                            
BK5|CH21                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXI                                                               
-                                                                           
  The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a               
battalion of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a            
battalion of the French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.          
  As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which                 
presented arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the                
opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It      
could be no one else. He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue      
uniform open over a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his          
shoulder. He was riding a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse            
with a crimson gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching                 
Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his             
cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon did not sit         
well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions shouted "Hurrah!" and          
"Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said something to Alexander, and both           
Emperors dismounted and took each other's hands. Napoleon's face            
wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was saying               
something affable to him.                                                   
  In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which          
were pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of      
Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander         
treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease         
with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday        
matter to him.                                                              
  Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites,              
approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came          
straight up to the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly             
found itself so close to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the          
front row, was afraid he might be recognized.                               
  "Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the        
bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating        
every letter.                                                               
                                                     {BK5|CH21 ^paragraph 5}
  This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into        
Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to        
him and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.                               
  "To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war,"             
added Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and         
assurance exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian          
ranks drawn up before him, who all presented arms with their eyes           
fixed on their Emperor.                                                     
  "Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said                 
Alexander and took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the           
commander of the battalion.                                                 
  Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,      
tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him          
rushed forward and picked it up.                                            
  "To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked                  
Koslovski, in Russian in a low voice.                                       
                                                    {BK5|CH21 ^paragraph 10}
  "To whomever Your Majesty commands."                                      
  The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing             
back, remarked:                                                             
  "But we must give him an answer."                                         
  Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his         
scrutiny.                                                                   
  "Can it be me?" thought Rostov.                                           
                                                    {BK5|CH21 ^paragraph 15}
  "Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the             
first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.                         
  "Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who        
did not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look          
at his colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to             
soldiers called before the ranks.                                           
  Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out      
behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing      
at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed            
something from one to another, and a page- the same one Rostov had          
seen the previous evening at Boris'- ran forward and, bowing                
respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a        
moment, laid in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without              
looking, pressed two fingers together and the badge was between             
them. Then he approached Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently      
gazed at his own monarch), looked round at the Emperor Alexander to         
imply that what he was now doing was done for the sake of his ally,         
and the small white hand holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's         
buttons. It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his      
hand to deign to touch that soldier's breast for the soldier to be          
forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished from everyone else in the        
world. Napoleon merely laid the cross on Lazarev's breast and,              
dropping his hand, turned toward Alexander as though sure that the          
cross would adhere there. And it really did.                                
  Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross         
and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little      
man with white hands who was doing something to him and, still              
standing motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into             
Alexander's eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go         
away, or do something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for        
some time in that rigid position.                                           
  The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion,        
breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the           
tables prepared for them.                                                   
                                                    {BK5|CH21 ^paragraph 20}
  Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers            
embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of           
officers and civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of             
Russian and French voices and laughter filled the air round the tables      
in the square. Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and        
happy, passed by Rostov.                                                    
  "What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them         
was saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?"                                        
  "I have."                                                                 
  "Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner."          
  "Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension           
for life."                                                                  
                                                    {BK5|CH21 ^paragraph 25}
  "Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a          
shaggy French cap.                                                          
  "It's a fine thing! First-rate!"                                          
  "Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another.      
"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure';              
yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it      
and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's        
Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He            
must respond in kind."                                                      
  Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk      
banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner          
of a house.                                                                 
  "Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could         
not refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and        
troubled was Rostov's face.                                                 
                                                    {BK5|CH21 ^paragraph 30}
  "Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov.                                       
  "You'll call round?"                                                      
  "Yes, I will."                                                            
  Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from      
a distance. a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on         
which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in           
his soul. Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his        
submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and         
its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of      
dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next      
he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white           
hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then        
why those severed arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he        
thought of Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He         
caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.      
  The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of      
hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to      
eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.      
There he found so many people, among them officers who, like                
himself, had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in            
getting a dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The          
conversation naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his               
comrades, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace           
concluded after the battle of Friedland. They said that had we held         
out a little longer Napoleon would have been done for, as his troops        
had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly      
the latter) in silence. He finished a couple of bottles of wine by          
himself. The process in his mind went on tormenting him without             
reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to his thoughts, yet           
could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the officers' saying         
that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began shouting        
with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to the surprise of the          
officers:                                                                   
                                                    {BK5|CH21 ^paragraph 35}
  "How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly             
rushing to his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What         
right have we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's or        
his actions!"                                                               
  "But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer,            
justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except      
on the supposition that he was drunk.                                       
  But Rostov did not listen to him.                                         
  "We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more,"      
he went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished,      
it means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the         
Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an        
alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If          
once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred          
will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no God- nothing!"        
shouted Nicholas, banging the table- very little to the point as it         
seemed to his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own      
thoughts.                                                                   
  "Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's        
all...." said he.                                                           
                                                    {BK5|CH21 ^paragraph 40}
  "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.              
                                                                            
BK5|CH22                                                                    
  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.                                              
                                                                            
BK6                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                              BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10                           
                                                                            
BK6|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.            
  All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates- and constantly         
changing from one thing to another had never accomplished- were             
carried out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible        
difficulty.                                                                 
  He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre            
lacked, and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.       
  On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and          
became free agricultural laborers- this being one of the first              
examples of the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory      
labor was commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for        
Bogucharovo at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and      
writing to the children of the peasants and household serfs.                
  Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father           
and his son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he         
spent in "Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince                
Andrew's estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the             
world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went      
on, received many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or        
his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life,           
these people lagged behind himself- who never left the country- in          
knowledge of what was happening in home and foreign affairs.                
                                                      {BK6|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great               
variety of books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a                
critical of survey our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with             
drawing up a proposal for a reform of the army rules and regulations.       
  In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which           
had been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.                       
  Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the        
new grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of          
white spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not          
thinking of anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from        
side to side.                                                               
  They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year           
before. They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and      
green fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near           
the bridge, uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past      
strips of stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there,        
and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the           
forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with           
their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers        
and the first blades of green grass were pushing up and lifting last        
year's leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees            
scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant                
reminder of winter. On entering the forest the horses began to snort        
and sweated visibly.                                                        
  Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter            
assented. But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for         
Peter, and he turned on the box toward his master.                          
                                                     {BK6|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                
                                                     {BK6|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK6|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the              
district in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of             
which he was trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the        
middle of May Prince Andrew went to visit him.                              
  It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already               
clothed in green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water        
one longed to bathe.                                                        
  Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about          
which he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the      
grounds of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish           
cries behind some trees on the right and saw group of girls running to      
cross the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran      
a dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz              
dress, with a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose         
locks of hair escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing          
that he was a stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.           
  Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so             
beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that            
slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and        
was contented and cheerful in her own separate- probably foolish-           
but bright and happy life. "What is she so glad about? What is she          
thinking of? Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement          
of the Ryazan serfs' quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so      
happy?" Prince Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.             
  In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done      
in former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province            
with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince      
Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his               
staying the night.                                                          
                                                      {BK6|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by         
his elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old        
count's house was crowded on account of an approaching name day),           
Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among         
the younger members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What      
is she thinking about? Why is she so glad?"                                 
  That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to              
sleep. He read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It         
was hot in the room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He           
was cross with the stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had            
made him stay by assuring him that some necessary documents had not         
yet arrived from town, and he was vexed with himself for having             
stayed.                                                                     
  He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened         
the shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for             
this, burst into the room. He opened the casement. The night was            
fresh, bright, and very still. Just before the window was a row of          
pollard trees, looking black on one side and with a silvery light on        
the other. Beneath the trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy              
vegetation with silver-lit leaves and stems here and there. Farther         
back beyond the dark trees a roof glittered with dew, to the right was      
a leafy tree with brilliantly white trunk and branches, and above it        
shone the moon, nearly at its full, in a pale, almost starless, spring      
sky. Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the window ledge and his            
eyes rested on that sky.                                                    
  His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were            
also awake. He heard female voices overhead.                                
  "Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew      
recognized at once.                                                         
                                                     {BK6|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                                     
                                                     {BK6|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  "Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you        
sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,          
Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never        
was such a lovely night before!"                                            
  Sonya made some reluctant reply.                                          
  "Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come                
here.... Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like        
sitting down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this,         
straining tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...."      
  "Take care, you'll fall out."                                             
  He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice:           
"It's past one o'clock."                                                    
                                                     {BK6|CH2 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                                                    
                                                                            
BK6|CH3                                                                     
  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.                                                                
                                                      {BK6|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  "No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided      
finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have        
in me- everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted        
to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may        
not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it,           
but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live        
in harmony!"                                                                
-                                                                           
  On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that           
autumn and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole            
serics of sensible and logical considerations showing it to be              
essential for him to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the             
service, kept springing up in his mind. He could not now understand         
how he could ever even have doubted the necessity of taking an              
active share in life, just as a month before he had not understood how      
the idea of leaving the quiet country could ever enter his head. It         
now seemed clear to him that all his experience of life must be             
senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some kind of work and again      
played an active part in life. He did not even remember how                 
formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical arguments, it         
had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if he now, after      
the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the           
possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or          
love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey to        
Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer             
interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,        
went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he          
would turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled      
a la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame.        
She did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked          
simply, merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing      
his arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling,        
as he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as      
a crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with               
Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's        
beauty and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he        
was particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.           
  "My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say,             
"little Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold."                       
  "If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly      
to his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he          
must wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That          
is what follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child         
who needs fresh air should remain at home," he would add with               
extreme logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical           
emotions that stirred within him.                                           
                                                     {BK6|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work           
dries men up.                                                               
                                                                            
BK6|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time      
when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his           
reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That            
same August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his            
leg, and remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every        
day and no one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being         
prepared that so agitated society- abolishing court ranks and               
introducing examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate            
Assessor and State Councilor- and not merely these but a whole state        
constitution, intended to change the existing order of government in        
Russia: legal, administrative, and financial, from the Council of           
State down to the district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams        
with which the Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he      
had tried to put into effect with the aid of his associates,                
Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonov- whom he himself          
in jest had called his Comite de salut public- were taking shape and        
being realized.                                                             
  Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side,           
and Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew,        
as a gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a          
levee. The Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with         
a single word. It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he         
was antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his            
face and personality generally, and in the cold, repellent glance           
the Emperor gave him, he now found further confirmation of this             
surmise. The courtiers explained the Emperor's neglect of him by His        
Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonski's not having served since 1805.          
  "I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and                  
antipathies," thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present          
my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor           
personally, but the project will speak for itself."                         
  He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend        
of his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him,          
received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few          
days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see           
the Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.                                       
-                                                                           
                                                      {BK6|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting      
room at nine in the morning.                                                
  He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he      
had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.          
  "He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not      
concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been                    
commissioned to consider my project, so he alone can get it                 
adopted," thought Prince Andrew as he waited among a number of              
important and unimportant people in Count Arakcheev's waiting room.         
  During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen        
the anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such        
rooms were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a        
special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting             
their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the          
faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of                 
awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of                 
themselves, their situation, and the person for whom they were              
waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and         
laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname "Sila Andreevich" and the         
words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in reference to Count                
Arakcheev. One general (an important personage), evidently feeling          
offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing his         
legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.                                 
  But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all          
faces- that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the            
adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look         
and was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others      
had been shown in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on         
duty, an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and             
frightened air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer's           
audience lasted a long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a           
harsh voice was heard from the other side of the door, and the              
officer- with pale face and trembling lips- came out and passed             
through the waiting room, clutching his head.                               
                                                     {BK6|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer        
on duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window."                   
  Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man        
of forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep               
wrinkles, scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an              
overhanging red nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without          
looking at him.                                                             
  "What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev.                                 
  "I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew           
quietly.                                                                    
  Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him.                                       
                                                     {BK6|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  "Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?"                                  
  "I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has         
deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..."               
  "You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted             
Arakcheev, uttering only the first words amiably and then- again            
without looking at Prince Andrew- relapsing gradually into a tone of        
grumbling contempt. "You are proposing new military laws? There are         
many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody          
designs laws, it is easier writing than doing."                             
  "I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your              
excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have               
presented," said Prince Andrew politely.                                    
  "I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to           
the committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and          
taking a paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to          
Prince Andrew.                                                              
                                                     {BK6|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  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."                                                       
                                                     {BK6|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  "A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the                
honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing      
to Prince Andrew.                                                           
                                                                            
BK6|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the              
committee Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances,                 
particularly those he knew to be in power and whose aid he might need.      
In Petersburg he now experienced the same feeling he had had on the         
eve of a battle, when troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly        
attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate of      
millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the             
older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated. the reserve of the             
initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the                 
innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned        
every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast             
civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was      
a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a           
man of genius- Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction of which      
Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski its chief promoter,           
began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army               
regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness.      
  Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception          
in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The          
reforming party cordially welcomed and courted him, the first place         
because he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly        
because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of           
being a liberal. The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured        
the innovations, turned to him expecting his sympathy in their              
disapproval of the reforms, simply because he was the son of his            
father. The feminine society world welcomed him gladly, because he was      
rich, distinguished, a good match, and almost a newcomer, with a            
halo of romance on account of his supposed death and the tragic loss        
of his wife. Besides this the general opinion of all who had known him      
previously was that he had greatly improved during these last five          
years, having softened and grown more manly, lost his former                
affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony, and acquired the                
serenity that comes with years. People talked about him, were               
interested in him, and wanted to meet him.                                  
  The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew           
spent the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his             
interview with Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that         
nickname with the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the         
Minister of War's anteroom).                                                
  "Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael                 
Mikhaylovich Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He        
has promised to come this evening."                                         
  "What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince        
Andrew.                                                                     
                                                      {BK6|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's         
simplicity.                                                                 
  "We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey               
continued, "and about your freed plowmen."                                  
  "Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old           
man of Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski.            
  "It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince         
Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old        
man uselessly.                                                              
  "Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey.          
                                                     {BK6|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow      
the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult      
to rule.... Just the same as now- I ask you, Count- who will be             
heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?"          
  "Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey,           
crossing his legs and glancing round.                                       
  "Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a           
priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?"             
  "Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general,            
but..."                                                                     
  Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the         
arm, and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a          
large open forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness,      
who was just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with      
a cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It           
was Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a             
throb within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it        
was from respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know.                   
Speranski's whole figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily        
recognizable. In the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never      
seen anyone who together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed         
such calmness and self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet         
gentle an expression as that in those half-closed, rather humid             
eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed nothing; nor had he heard such      
a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all he had never seen such             
delicate whiteness of face or hands- hands which were broad, but            
very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness and softness Prince Andrew      
had only seen on the faces of soldiers who had been long in                 
hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the           
Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once met        
and talked with Napoleon.                                                   
                                                     {BK6|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as              
people involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no           
hurry to speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be            
listened to, and he looked only at the person with whom he was              
conversing.                                                                 
  Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with           
particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men who      
judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new-         
especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation-              
expected to discover in him the perfection of human qualities.              
  Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come           
sooner as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that           
the Emperor had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation        
of modesty. When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly        
turned his eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at         
him in silence.                                                             
  "I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as         
everyone has," he said after a pause.                                       
  Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given         
Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.                                  
                                                     {BK6|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  "The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend      
Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and             
syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused      
at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to        
co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable."                            
  A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked      
about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.            
  Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every           
movement of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant          
divinity student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands- those      
plump white hands- the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the      
extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the      
old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an          
immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud,              
Speranski smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or            
disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign.                                 
  Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski         
rose and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of      
the room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest             
himself in Bolkonski.                                                       
  "I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated            
conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said        
with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile            
that he and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the              
people with whom he had just been talking. This flattered Prince            
Andrew. "I have known of you for a long time: first from your action        
with regard to your serfs, a first example, of which it is very             
desirable that there should be more imitators; and secondly because         
you are one of those gentlemen of the chamber who have not                  
considered themselves offended by the new decree concerning the             
ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much gossip and            
tittle-tattle."                                                             
                                                     {BK6|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  "No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take              
advantage of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade."      
  "Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above           
our contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely                 
reestablishes natural justice."                                             
  "I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground,"            
returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of          
which he began to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in        
everything and felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke           
easily and well, he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now             
while talking with Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing         
the famous man's personality.                                               
  "Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly.           
  "And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew.               
                                                     {BK6|CH5 ^paragraph 30}
  "What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes.           
  "I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his         
idea that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait                
incontestable. Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me              
paraissent etre des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment."*                      
-                                                                           
  *"The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable.         
Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy appear to me a means      
of maintaining that sentiment."                                             
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK6|CH5 ^paragraph 35}
  The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much            
improved by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested         
him.                                                                        
  "Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,"* he began,          
pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower        
than in Russian but quite calmly.                                           
-                                                                           
  *"If you regard the question from that point of view."                    
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK6|CH5 ^paragraph 40}
  Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honeur, cannot be upheld by        
privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either         
a negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a              
source of emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which           
recognize it. His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.                
  "An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one          
similar to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not          
harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class          
or court privilege."                                                        
  "I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court                
privileges have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every      
courtier considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily."        
  "Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince,"         
said Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably      
an argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will          
do me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will,          
after talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you,           
and shall also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you."         
  Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and      
trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.        
                                                                            
BK6|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew            
felt the whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of            
seclusion quite overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed           
him in that city.                                                           
  On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook        
four or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The         
mechanism of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time           
everywhere, absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did           
nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only talked,         
and talked successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.       
  He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the            
same remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy        
for whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was           
thinking of nothing.                                                        
  As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski            
produced a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when        
he received him tete-a-tate at his own house and talked to him long         
and confidentially.                                                         
  To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and                     
insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the            
living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he             
readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a             
perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Speranski sprung from the          
same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and                   
traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human,           
unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of      
mind inspired him with respect all the more because he did not quite        
understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he appreciated the      
other's capacity or because he considered it necessary to win him to        
his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness before           
Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which goes        
hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption         
that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of             
understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the                      
reasonableness and profundity of one's own ideas.                           
                                                      {BK6|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski            
more than once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the            
common level of rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the        
wolves to be fed and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot              
understand this..." and all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you           
and I, understand what they are and who we are."                            
  This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in          
Prince Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first      
meeting. He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast             
intellect who by his energy and persistence had attained power,             
which he was using solely for the welfare of Russia. In Prince              
Andrew's eyes Speranski was the man he would himself have wished to         
be- one who explained all the facts of life reasonably, considered          
important only what was rational, and was capable of applying the           
standard of reason to everything. Everything seemed so simple and           
clear in Speranski's exposition that Prince Andrew involuntarily            
agreed with him about everything. If he replied and argued, it was          
only because he wished to maintain his independence and not submit          
to Speranski's opinions entirely. Everything was right and                  
everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince          
Andrew. This was Speranski's cold, mirrorlike look, which did not           
allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands,           
which Prince Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the             
hands of those who possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those            
delicate hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was             
unpleasantly struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others that he      
observed in Speranski, and by the diversity of lines of argument he         
used to support his opinions. He made use of every kind of mental           
device, except analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince          
Andrew, from one to another. Now he would take up the position of a         
practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and             
laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely logical, or            
suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last resource was one      
he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to               
metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time, and            
thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again          
descend to the level of the original discussion.                            
  In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince         
Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and         
authority of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur      
to him which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is         
after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had             
never felt the doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And        
it was just this peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly          
attracted Prince Andrew.                                                    
  During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a            
passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt        
for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village             
priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account          
of his humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to         
cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to                
strengthen it.                                                              
  On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the      
Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him         
sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and             
fifty years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that            
Rosenkampf had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the          
different codes.                                                            
                                                     {BK6|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent,"            
said he. "We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have      
no laws. That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to           
serve in these times!"                                                      
  Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in                     
jurisprudence was needed which he did not possess.                          
  "But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious         
circle from which we must break a way out."                                 
  A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army          
Regulations and- what he had not at all expected- was chairman of a         
section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At                   
Speranski's request he took the first part of the Civil Code that           
was being drawn up and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the           
Institutes of Justinian, he worked at formulating the section on            
Personal Rights.                                                            
                                                                            
BK6|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to             
Petersburg after visiting his estates had involuntarily found               
himself in a leading position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He           
arranged dining and funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members,           
and busied himself uniting various lodges and acquiring authentic           
charters. He gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented        
as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the           
majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost          
singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in Petersburg.               
  His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations        
and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he            
considered it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations      
of the bachelor circles in which he moved.                                  
  Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre      
at the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to         
rest upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under      
him. At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under         
him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had      
joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who             
confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his         
foot down it sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness the ground,        
he put his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in           
it, and involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.                           
  Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg- he had of late stood             
aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost           
entirely in Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew      
in ordinary life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely        
as Brothers in Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D.,      
whom he knew in society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under         
the Masonic aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at      
which they aimed in ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and         
reckoning up twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in          
promises from a dozen members, of whom half were as well able to pay        
as himself, Pierre remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother         
promised to devote all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on        
which he tried not to dwell arose in his soul.                              
  He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first        
he put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the          
lodges or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the          
mystical science of the order: with questions of the threefold              
designation of God, the three primordial elements- sulphur, mercury,        
and salt- or the meaning of the square and all the various figures          
of the temple of Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to        
which the elder ones chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought,           
Joseph Alexeevich himself, but he did not share their interests. His        
heart was not in the mystical aspect of Freemasonry.                        
                                                      {BK6|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like            
him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a        
straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.                       
  In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority)           
who saw nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and                   
ceremonies, and prized the strict performance of these forms without        
troubling about their purport or significance. Such were Willarski and      
even the Grand Master of the principal lodge.                               
  Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,      
particularly those who had lately joined. These according to                
Pierre's observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor           
desire for anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate          
with the wealthy young Brothers who were influential through their          
connections or rank, and of whom there were very many in the lodge.         
  Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing.                 
Freemasonry, at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him         
based merely on externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry         
itself, but suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path           
and deviated from its original principles. And so toward the end of         
the year he went abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the      
order.                                                                      
  In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our                  
Freemasons knew from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov         
had obtained the confidence of many highly placed persons, had been         
initiated into many mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade,           
and was bringing back with him much that might conduce to the               
advantage of the Masonic cause in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons         
all came to see him, tried to ingratiate themselves with him, and it        
seemed to them all that he was preparing something for them and             
concealing it.                                                              
                                                     {BK6|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                 
                                                     {BK6|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                               
                                                     {BK6|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
-                                                                           
  At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will        
reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue      
alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.         
Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would      
be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for         
the usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.                      
                                                                            
BK6|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For           
three days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a        
sofa at home receiving no one and going nowhere.                            
  It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who             
implored him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and      
how she wished to devote her whole life to him.                             
  At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she          
would return to Petersburg from abroad.                                     
  Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre             
respected less than the others forced his way in to see him and,            
turning the conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way          
of fraternal advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his          
wife was wrong and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of         
Freemasonry by not forgiving the penitent.                                  
  At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to         
him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a            
most important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy               
against him and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and          
in the mood he then was, this was not even unpleasant to him.               
Nothing mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of much              
importance, and under the influence of the depression that possessed        
him he valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his          
wife.                                                                       
                                                      {BK6|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  "No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to             
blame," he thought.                                                         
  If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife,        
it was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to      
take any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned           
her away. Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of          
indifference whether he lived with his wife or not?                         
  Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre          
late one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see         
Joseph Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary:                      
-                                                                           
  Moscow, 17th November                                                     
                                                     {BK6|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down         
what I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has         
for three years been suffering from a painful disease of the                
bladder. No one has ever heard him utter a groan or a word of               
complaint. From morning till late at night, except when he eats his         
very plain food, he is working at science. He received me graciously        
and made me sit down on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of         
the Knights of the East and of Jerusalem, and he responded in the same      
manner, asking me with a mild smile what I had learned and gained in        
the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him everything as best I           
could, and told him what I had proposed to our Petersburg lodge, of         
the bad reception I had encountered, and of my rupture with the             
Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich, having remained silent and thoughtful for      
a good while, told me his view of the matter, which at once lit up for      
me my whole past and the future path I should follow. He surprised          
me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of the order:           
(1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The purification         
and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The                   
improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which      
is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and         
self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently      
of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the            
greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of        
this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our          
impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the         
human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and               
profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is           
attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground         
Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in         
the depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs        
he said to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you,         
lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the         
difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on        
the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares         
that we can attain our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge- for man        
can only know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can         
only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief           
virtue- love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its        
vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new          
life." These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of         
his great physical sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of          
life though he loves death, for which- in spite of the purity and           
loftiness of his inner man- he does not yet feel himself                    
sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the         
meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the      
numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not      
to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only      
second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting the                
Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path                      
self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for          
myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that        
end he gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which         
I will in future note down all my actions.                                  
-                                                                           
  Petersburg, 23rd November                                                 
  I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears      
and said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her;         
that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I         
knew that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to        
go on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know             
whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would          
have told me what to do. I went to my room and reread Joseph                
Alexeevich's letters and recalled my conversations with him, and            
deduced from it all that I ought not to refuse a suppliant, and             
ought to reach a helping hand to everyone- especially to one so             
closely bound to me- and that I must bear my cross. But if I forgive        
her for the sake of doing right, then let union with her have only a        
spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and what I wrote to Joseph           
Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her to forget the past, to         
forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had               
nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know      
how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on the upper        
floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of              
regeneration.                                                               
                                                                            
BK6|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at          
court and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each         
with its own particular tone. The largest of these was the French           
circle of the Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev           
and Caulaincourt. In this group Helene, as soon as she had settled          
in Petersburg with her husband, took a very prominent place. She was        
visited by the members of the French embassy and by many belonging          
to that circle and noted for their intellect and polished manners.          
  Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the                
Emperors and had brought from there these connections with the              
Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant.          
Napoleon himself had noticed her in the theater and said of her:            
"C'est un superbe animal."* Her success as a beautiful and elegant          
woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer            
than before. What did surprise him was that during these last two           
years his wife had succeeded in gaining the reputation "d' une femme        
charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle."*[2] The distinguished              
Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilibin saved up his          
epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence. To be            
received in the Countess Bezukhova's salon was regarded as a diploma        
of intellect. Young men read books before attending Helene's evenings,      
to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy,      
and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a      
way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid,               
sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her      
evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy         
were discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of a          
conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at any moment.        
But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a        
salon, or because those who were deceived found pleasure in the             
deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene Bezukhova's         
reputation as a lovely and clever woman became so firmly established        
that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and everybody          
would go into raptures over every word of hers and look for a profound      
meaning in it of which she herself had no conception.                       
-                                                                           
  *"That's a superb animal."                                                
  *[2] "Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely."                    
                                                      {BK6|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He      
was that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no        
one's way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general                  
impression of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he               
presented to her, as an advantageous background to his elegant and          
tactful wife. Pierre during the last two years, as a result of his          
continual absorption in abstract interests and his sincere contempt         
for all else, had acquired in his wife's circle, which did not              
interest him, that air of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence          
toward all, which cannot be acquired artificially and therefore             
inspires involuntary respect. He entered his wife's drawing room as         
one enters a theater, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased        
to see everyone, and equally indifferent to them all. Sometimes he          
joined in a conversation which interested him and, regardless of            
whether any "gentlemen of the embassy" were present or not,                 
lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all in           
accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion        
concerning the queer husband of "the most distinguished woman in            
Petersburg" was so well established that no one took his freaks             
seriously.                                                                  
  Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris        
Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was      
the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's           
return from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated           
him like a child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but      
sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris            
behaved with a particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of      
deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three         
years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected         
him that he now protected himself from the danger of its repetition,        
first by not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing      
himself to suspect.                                                         
  "No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally               
renounced her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has             
never been an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs      
of the heart"- a statement which, though gathered from an unknown           
source, he believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence          
in his wife's drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a           
physical effect upon Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed         
the unconsciousness and freedom of his movements.                           
  "What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like           
him very much."                                                             
                                                     {BK6|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                             
                                                                            
BK6|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it            
during that time:                                                           
-                                                                           
  24th November                                                             
  Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. [By         
Joseph Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state      
and served on one of the committees.] Returned home for dinner and          
dined alone- the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and        
drank moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the          
Brothers. In the evening I went down to the countess and told a             
funny story about B., and only remembered that I ought not to have          
done so when everybody laughed loudly at it.                                
  I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me      
to walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and                  
deliberation, (2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion,         
(3) to withdraw from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the      
state, (b) family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the            
management of my affairs.                                                   
                                                     {BK6|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  27th November                                                             
  I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,      
help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the                
Scriptures, but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we          
talked about worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new              
projects. I began to criticize them, but remembered my rules and my         
benefactor's words- that a true Freemason should be a zealous worker        
for the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when not        
called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O.           
visited me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a           
new Brother. They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak         
and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the interpretation of the             
seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven sciences, the seven        
virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.           
Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place.      
The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the                  
magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was              
admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling             
agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I        
caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I              
vainly tried to overcome. That is why I should really like to save him      
from evil and lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of         
him did not leave me. It seemed to me that his object in entering           
the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in favor with members of      
our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked me several times           
whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a question to which I          
could not reply) and that according to my observation he is                 
incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and is too preoccupied      
and satisfied with the outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I         
had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all           
the time I stood alone with him in the dark temple it seemed to me          
that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I wished really to      
stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I could not be            
eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the Brothers and to      
the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to find the            
true path out of the labyrinth of lies!                                     
-                                                                           
   After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then           
the following was written:                                                  
                                                    {BK6|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who         
advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was        
revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim      
is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name                 
unutterable which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen,          
refresh, and support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt        
has no place. The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane         
science and our sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human         
sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to        
examine it. In the holy science of our order all is one, all is             
known in its entirety and life. The Trinity- the three elements of          
matter- are sulphur, mercury, and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and           
fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature it               
arouses a desire in the latter by means of which it attracts                
mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination produces other             
bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence. Christ, the        
Holy Spirit, Him!...                                                        
-                                                                           
  3rd December                                                              
  Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went        
and paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but             
instead my imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago,            
when Dolokhov, meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I         
was enjoying perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At        
the time I gave him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that          
meeting and in my mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter              
replies. I recollected myself and drove away that thought only when         
I found myself glowing with anger, but I did not sufficiently               
repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy came and began relating various         
adventures. His coming vexed me from the first, and I said something        
disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared up and said much that was         
unpleasant and even rude to him. He became silent, and I recollected        
myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get on with him          
at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set myself above him and so      
become much worse than he, for he is lenient to my rudeness while I on      
the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God, grant that in his             
presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave so that he too        
may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was drowsing off I         
clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, "Thy day!"                     
                                                    {BK6|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded      
by dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my        
left thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it      
with my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger          
one, began biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the        
bigger and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking        
my arm, led me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a          
narrow plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to      
clamber up a fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After        
much effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one            
side and my body on the other. I looked round and saw Brother A.            
standing on the fence and pointing me to a broad avenue and garden,         
and in the garden was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O          
Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear from myself these          
dogs- my passions especially the last, which unites in itself the           
strength of all the former ones, and aid me to enter that temple of         
virtue to a vision of which I attained in my dream.                         
-                                                                           
  7th December                                                              
  I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I      
was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered      
incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this             
could not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace         
him. But as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and         
grown young, and he was quietly telling me something about the              
teaching of our order, but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it      
seemed that we all left the room and something strange happened. We         
were sitting or lying on the floor. He was telling me something, and I      
wished to show him my sensibility, and not listening to what he was         
saying I began picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and        
the grace of God sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I         
was glad he noticed this. But be looked at me with vexation and jumped      
up, breaking off his remarks. I felt abashed and asked whether what he      
had been saying did not concern me; but he did not reply, gave me a         
kind look, and then we suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom where         
there is a double bed. He lay down on the edge of it and I burned with      
longing to caress him and lie down too. And he said, "Tell me               
frankly what is your chief temptation? Do you know it? I think you          
know it already." Abashed by this question, I replied that sloth was        
my chief temptation. He shook his head incredulously; and even more         
abashed, I said that though I was living with my wife as he advised, I      
was not living with her as her husband. To this he replied that one         
should not deprive a wife of one's embraces and gave me to                  
understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should be            
ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and         
found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life was the light          
of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness                 
comprehended it not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and         
bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he         
wrote about "conjugal duties."                                              
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK6|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  9th December                                                              
  I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw            
that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and              
Joseph Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at        
once that the process of regeneration had already taken place in            
him, and I rushed to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands,         
and he said, "Hast thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked        
at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw that his face was young,      
but that he had no hair on his head and his features were quite             
changed. And I said, "I should have known you had I met you by              
chance," and I thought to myself, "Am I telling the truth?" And             
suddenly I saw him lying like a dead body; then he gradually recovered      
and went with me into my study carrying a large book of sheets of           
drawing paper; I said, "I drew that," and he answered by bowing his         
head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there were excellent          
drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings represented the        
love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on its pages I saw a      
beautiful representation of a maiden in transparent garments and            
with a transparent body, flying up to the clouds. And I seemed to know      
that this maiden was nothing else than a representation of the Song of      
Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt that I was doing      
wrong, but could not tear myself away from them. Lord, help me! My          
God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but if I am        
myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of my           
debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!                                    
                                                                            
BK6|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two             
years they had spent in the country.                                        
  Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was          
still serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending                     
comparatively little, the way of life at Otradnoe- Mitenka's                
management of affairs, in particular- was such that the debts               
inevitably increased every year. The only resource obviously                
presenting itself to the old count was to apply for an official             
post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one and also, as he          
said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last time.                
  Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was      
accepted.                                                                   
  Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without         
themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of           
acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they            
were provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow        
without inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.      
  The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in          
Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country           
neighbors from Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters,      
Peronskaya a maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their           
district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the        
men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in         
Petersburg were Boris, Pierre whom the count had met in the street and      
dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs'        
and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young         
man pays when he intends to propose.                                        
                                                     {BK6|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at            
Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He           
narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air          
that everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he      
had obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.                                
  In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had         
picked up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp            
standing near the commander in chief and had taken it to his                
commander. Just as he had done after Austerlitz, he related this            
occurrence at such length and so insistently that everyone again            
believed it had been necessary to do this, and he received two              
decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a captain in           
the Guards, wore medals, and held some special lucrative posts in           
Petersburg.                                                                 
  Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not      
be denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent         
terms with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant            
career before him and an assured position in society.                       
  Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a            
Moscow theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had            
said in German, "das soll mein Weib werden,"* and from that moment had      
made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered         
the Rostovs' position and his own, he decided that the time had come        
to propose.                                                                 
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK6|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  *"That girl shall be my wife."                                            
-                                                                           
  Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not      
flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an            
obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess            
Rostova; but Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good          
natured egotism that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it             
would be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that        
it was good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were          
seriously embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above          
all, Vera was twenty-four, had been taken out everywhere, and though        
she was certainly good-looking and sensible, no one up to now had           
proposed to her. So they gave their consent.                                
  "You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only         
because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered      
it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if          
it were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and             
mamma are now provided for- I have arranged that rent for them in           
the Baltic Provinces- and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with      
her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not        
marrying for money- I consider that dishonorable- but a wife should         
bring her share and a husband his. I have my position in the                
service, she has connections and some means. In our times that is           
worth something, isn't it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable      
girl, and she loves me..."                                                  
  Berg blushed and smiled.                                                  
                                                    {BK6|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  "And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good.         
Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite             
different- an unpleasant character and has not the same                     
intelligence. She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But my                
fiancee!... Well, you will be coming," he was going to say, "to dine,"      
but changed his mind and said "to take tea with us," and quickly            
doubling up his tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke,         
perfectly embodying his dream of happiness.                                 
  After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by           
Berg's proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times         
took possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and           
insincere. In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain            
awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not      
having loved Vera sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off         
their hands. The old count felt this most. He would probably have been      
unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from        
the state of his affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what      
his debts amounted to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his           
daughters were born he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an      
estate with three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had               
already been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so          
much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was               
impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had he any money.                        
  Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained           
before the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own            
mind the question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At         
one time the count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of            
selling a forest, at another time of borrowing money on a note of           
hand. A few days before the wedding Berg entered the count's study          
early one morning and, with a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his        
future father-in-law to let him know what Vera's dowry would be. The        
count was so disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry that without        
consideration he gave the first reply that came into his head. "I like      
your being businesslike about it.... I like it. You shall be                
satisfied...."                                                              
  And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the            
conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did        
not know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at        
least part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters          
off.                                                                        
  "Because, consider, Count- if I allowed myself to marry now               
without having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be              
acting badly...."                                                           
                                                    {BK6|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  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."                                
                                                                            
BK6|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which      
she had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four        
years ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her            
mother, if Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of        
that episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not        
worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question         
whether her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding         
promise tormented her.                                                      
  Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had had not seen      
the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed            
near Otradnoe, but had never been to see them.                              
  Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to see her, and         
this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders           
spoke of him.                                                               
  "Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say         
when Boris was mentioned.                                                   
  Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently,           
seemed to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke            
rapturously and gratefully of the merits of her son and the                 
brilliant career on which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to          
Petersburg Boris called on them.                                            
                                                     {BK6|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was      
his most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of        
letting her and her parents feel that the childish relations between        
himself and Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He        
had a brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with             
Countess Bezukhova, a brilliant position in the service thanks to           
the patronage of an important personage whose complete confidence he        
enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the         
richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be           
realized. When he entered the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her      
own room. When she heard of his arrival she almost ran into the             
drawing room, flushed and beaming with a more than cordial smile.           
  Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining         
from under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had           
known her four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a         
different Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous                 
astonishment. This expression on his face pleased Natasha.                  
  "Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the           
countess.                                                                   
  Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the        
change in her.                                                              
  "How handsome you have grown!"                                            
                                                    {BK6|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  "I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes.                     
  "And is Papa older?" she asked.                                           
  Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with         
the countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He      
felt the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced      
at her occasionally.                                                        
  Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were         
all comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at        
once. He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess,          
arranging with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his        
left hand like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined             
compression of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg      
society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow           
acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded,      
when speaking of the highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he        
had attended, and to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.         
  All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under           
her brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He         
looked round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he           
was saying. He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and            
took his leave. The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather               
mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Boris said          
to himself that Natasha attracted him just as much as ever, but that        
he must not yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost      
without fortune, would mean ruin to his career, while to renew their        
former relations without intending to marry her would be dishonorable.      
Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting Natasha, but despite that           
resolution he called again a few days later and began calling often         
and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It seemed to him that he           
ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell her that the old         
times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything... she could           
not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never let her         
marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about entering on        
such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more                
entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in            
love with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him      
her album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to           
the past, letting it be understood how was the present; and every           
day he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and        
not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end.      
He left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her         
every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.       
                                                                            
BK6|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,         
without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing      
under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and         
bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also          
in a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in         
curlpapers, ran in. The countess- her prayerful mood dispelled- looked      
round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be            
that this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager,              
seeing her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down,      
and unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing          
that her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and,         
rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her          
slippers and jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might              
become her grave. This couch was high, with a feather bed and five          
pillows each smaller than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank         
into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling          
up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her knees to her             
chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering               
herself up head and all, and now peeping at her mother. The countess        
finished her prayers and came to the bed with a stern face, but             
seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in her kind,            
weak way.                                                                   
  "Now then, now then!" said she.                                           
  "Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on         
your throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round        
the neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her              
mother Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that      
however she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without          
hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.                 
  "Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her          
pillows and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of            
times, had settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her          
arms, and assumed a serious expression.                                     
  These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from         
his club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and             
daughter.                                                                   
                                                     {BK6|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  "What is it tonight?- But I have to tell you..."                          
  Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth.                               
  "About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have          
come about. Don't say it- I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her      
hand. "Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?"                                          
  "Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say             
Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what         
then?... What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his             
head, I can see that...."                                                   
  As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter.               
Natasha was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the        
mahogany sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the        
countess only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her      
by its peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.                      
                                                    {BK6|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  Natasha was listening and considering.                                    
  "Well, what then?" said she.                                              
  "You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him?        
You know you can't marry him."                                              
  "Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position.                   
  "Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a                 
relation... and because you yourself don't love him."                       
                                                    {BK6|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "How do you know?"                                                        
  "I know. It is not right, darling!"                                       
   "But if I want to..." said Natasha.                                      
  "Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess.                          
  "But if I want to..."                                                     
                                                    {BK6|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "Natasha, I am in earnest..."                                             
  Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to      
her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned          
it over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between         
the knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February,        
March, April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!"        
said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her             
daughter and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she         
had wished to say.                                                          
  "It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this                  
friendship dating from your childish days, and to see him so                
intimate with you may injure you in the eyes of other young men who         
visit us, and above all it torments him for nothing. He may already         
have found a suitable and wealthy match, and now he's half crazy."          
  "Crazy?" repeated Natasha.                                                
  "I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..."               
                                                    {BK6|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  "I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old."                                
  "He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have      
a talk with Boris. He need not come so often...."                           
  "Why not, if he likes to?"                                                
  "Because I know it will end in nothing...."                               
  "How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!"         
said Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well,      
I won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it."            
Natasha smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just            
so," she added.                                                             
                                                    {BK6|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  "How so, my pet?"                                                         
  "Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so."           
  "Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she      
went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.                    
  "Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed!        
You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she      
seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little               
finger, saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the      
other hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think?        
Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very,        
very nice. Only not quite my taste- he is so narrow, like the               
dining-room clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know- gray,         
light gray..."                                                              
  "What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess.                         
                                                    {BK6|CH13 ^paragraph 35}
  Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would           
understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is         
square."                                                                    
  "You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing.                    
  "No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue           
and red.... How can I explain it to you?"                                   
  "Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door.         
"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers,           
and ran barefoot to her own room.                                           
  It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no      
one could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.      
                                                    {BK6|CH13 ^paragraph 40}
  "Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little         
kitten with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's           
virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know          
anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how          
clever I am and how... charming she is," she went on, speaking of           
herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very wise            
man- the wisest and best of men- who was saying it of her. "There is        
everything, everything in her," continued this man. "She is                 
unusually intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty,                  
uncommonly pretty, and agile- she swims and rides splendidly... and         
her voice! One can really say it's a wonderful voice!"                      
  She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw            
herself on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would          
immediately fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the            
candle, and before Dunyasha had left the room had already passed            
into yet another happier world of dreams, where everything was as           
light and beautiful as in reality, and even more so because it was          
different.                                                                  
-                                                                           
  Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him,         
after which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'.                               
                                                                            
BK6|CH14                                                                    
  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.                  
                                                     {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who         
were to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.                     
  There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in         
the Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive,         
that the dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be         
arranged as it should be.                                                   
  Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at           
the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the      
countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high              
society, was to accompany them to the ball.                                 
  They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten      
o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were         
not yet dressed.                                                            
  Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight        
that morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all         
day. All her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring         
that they all- she herself, Mamma, and Sonya- should be as well             
dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in        
her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and      
the two girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their         
bodices and their hair dressed a la grecque.                                
                                                    {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks,           
and ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the              
openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were             
already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing           
dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about        
helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a            
looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender                
shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and,         
pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was              
fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went through it.           
  "That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha            
turning her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the        
maid who was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not          
right. Come here!"                                                          
  Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.              
  "Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was          
holding Natasha's hair.                                                     
  "Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya."                         
                                                    {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  "Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice.           
  "Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?"                                     
  "I have only my cap to pin on."                                           
  "Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right."        
  "But it's already ten."                                                   
                                                    {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had      
still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.           
  When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under        
which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket,        
ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother.               
Turning her mother's head this way and that, she fastened on the cap        
and, hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were        
turning up the hem of her skirt.                                            
  The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long.           
Two maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of      
thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the        
countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer             
garment up high on one uplifted hand.                                       
  "Mavra, quicker, darling!"                                                
  "Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..."                                 
                                                    {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  "Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door.         
"Here is here is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting."          
  "It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze         
dress with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as        
if by this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of         
what she held.                                                              
  Natasha began putting on the dress.                                       
  "In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her         
father as he opened the door- speaking from under the filmy skirt           
which still covered her whole face.                                         
  Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in.          
He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and           
was perfumed and his hair pomaded.                                          
                                                    {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 30}
  "Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood      
in the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.             
  "If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was      
pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of           
her mouth to the other with her tongue.                                     
  "Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she        
looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long."                
  Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress      
was too long.                                                               
  "Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling          
on her knees after her young lady.                                          
                                                    {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 35}
  "Well, if it's too long we'll take it up... we'll tack it up in           
one minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck      
on the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set      
to work once more.                                                          
  At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in           
her cap and velvet gown.                                                    
  "Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than           
any of you!"                                                                
  He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside               
fearing to be rumpled.                                                      
  "Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange         
it," and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up           
her skirt could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn          
off.                                                                        
                                                    {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 40}
  "Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!"             
  "Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha.               
  "What a beauty- a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the          
door. "And Sonya! They are lovely!"                                         
  At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and           
started. But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.                 
  Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she         
had gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less             
flurry- for to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was        
washed, perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed         
behind her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing         
room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her           
old lady's maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs'         
servants had been.                                                          
                                                    {BK6|CH14 ^paragraph 45}
  She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet,      
and at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they         
settled themselves in their carriages and drove off.                        
                                                                            
BK6|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not         
once had time to think of what lay before her.                              
  In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage,      
she for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her           
there at the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms- with music,             
flowers, dances, the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of         
Petersburg. The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it        
would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness           
and closeness of the carriage. She understood all that awaited her          
only when, after stepping over the red baize at the entrance, she           
entered the hall, took off her fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in          
front of her mother, mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between        
the flowers. Only then did she remember how she must behave at a ball,      
and tried to assume the majestic air she considered indispensable           
for a girl on such an occasion. But, fortunately for her, she felt her      
eyes growing misty, she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a               
hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She             
could not assume that pose, which would have made her ridiculous,           
and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying with all        
her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that became         
her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering, also         
talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the           
landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with        
diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.                           
  Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her               
reflection from the others. All was blended into one brilliant              
procession. On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices,             
footsteps, and greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter        
dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had already been          
standing at the door for half an hour repeating the same words to           
the various arrivals, "Charme de vous voir,"* greeted the Rostovs           
and Peronskaya in the same manner.                                          
-                                                                           
  *"Delighted to see you."                                                  
                                                     {BK6|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her             
black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye             
involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and      
gave her alone a special smile in addition to her usual smile as            
hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden,                   
irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The          
host also followed Natasha with his eyes and asked the count which was      
his daughter.                                                               
  "Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.                     
  In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting      
the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front            
rows of that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were         
asking about her and looking at her. She realized that those                
noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.            
  "There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought.              
                                                    {BK6|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important            
people at the ball.                                                         
  "That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man,"         
she said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray             
curly hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he           
said.                                                                       
  "Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said      
Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She        
is quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay      
court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince- is quite mad         
about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even            
more run after."                                                            
  She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very        
plain daughter.                                                             
  "She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And         
look, here come her suitors."                                               
                                                    {BK6|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  "That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating      
a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head         
erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's             
handsome, isn't he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl.           
But your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say        
she has millions. Oh yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she        
replied to the countess' inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he        
were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming.          
No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still         
the most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply         
she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the             
universal Freemason," she went on, indicating Pierre. "Put him              
beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!"                            
  Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the          
crowd and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly          
as if he were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through,         
evidently looking for someone.                                              
  Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the              
buffoon," as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for         
them, and for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and      
introduce partners to her.                                                  
  But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome,         
dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a           
window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at         
once recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it        
was Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger,                
happier, and better-looking.                                                
  "There's someone else we know- Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said        
Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a             
night with us at Otradnoe."                                                 
                                                    {BK6|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  "Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a         
present la pluie et le beau temps."* He's too proud for anything.           
Takes after his father. And he's hand in glove with Speranski, writing      
some project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There's one      
talking to him and he has turned away," she said, pointing at him.          
"I'd give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies."              
-                                                                           
  *"He is all the rage just now.                                            
                                                                            
BK6|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and        
then back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor           
entered to the sounds of music that had immediately struck up.              
Behind him walked his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing        
to right and left as if anxious to get the first moments of the             
reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at that time on      
account of the words that had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander,        
Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on        
to the drawing room, the crowd made a rush for the doors, and               
several persons with excited faces hurried there and back again.            
Then the crowd hastily retired from the drawing-room door, at which         
the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A young man, looking         
distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside.          
Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the         
rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets.         
The men began to choose partners and take their places for the              
polonaise.                                                                  
  Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing      
room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the            
music. The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came         
ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya               
diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners and        
were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the            
polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and          
Sonya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not              
having been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms               
hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly,      
and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight        
before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She         
was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people            
whom Peronskaya was pointing out- she had but one thought: "Is it           
possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to         
dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me?         
They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they         
were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth            
looking at her!' No, it's impossible," she thought. "They must know         
how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would             
enjoy dancing with me."                                                     
  The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable      
time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears.         
She wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the           
other end of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by      
themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of                  
strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone.         
Prince Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing them.        
The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and      
looked at Natasha as one looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice           
and each time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing,         
came up to them.                                                            
  This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha- as if there          
were nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did      
not listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her      
own green dress.                                                            
  At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced        
with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the      
Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they        
were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the          
distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The            
Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had      
yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went          
up to Countess Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly              
raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him.         
The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly          
round her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding      
first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room          
he caught Helene's left hand and turned her, the only sound audible,        
apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of           
the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his           
partner's velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled        
round. Natasha gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not        
she who was dancing that first turn of the waltz.                           
                                                     {BK6|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing         
stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in           
the front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff         
was talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State          
to be held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with           
Speranski and participating in the work of the legislative commission,      
could give reliable information about that sitting, concerning which        
various rumors were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was          
saying, he was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men               
intending to dance who had not yet gathered courage to enter the            
circle.                                                                     
  Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's             
presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to        
dance.                                                                      
  Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.                          
  "You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask        
her," he said.                                                              
  "Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to        
the baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere- at a ball           
one must dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated.      
The despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his            
eye. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her           
debut, remembered her conversation at the window, and with an               
expression of pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.             
                                                    {BK6|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess,            
with heightened color.                                                      
  "I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess         
remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite        
belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching            
Natasha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed      
his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on         
Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly            
brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.                         
  "I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little          
girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as      
she raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the              
second couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best        
dancers of his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet          
in their white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly,         
and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic           
happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful- compared      
to Helene's her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But        
Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands      
of looks that had scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl         
exposed for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed           
had she not been assured that this was absolutely necessary.                
  Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as          
possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed        
to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he                 
disliked, caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had              
chosen Natasha because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she        
was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he           
embraced that slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close          
to him and smiling so near him than the wine of her charm rose to           
his head, and he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after            
leaving her he stood breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.       
                                                                            
BK6|CH17                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for dance, and          
then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young      
men, so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous             
partners to Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She           
noticed and saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did        
she fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the French      
ambassador, and how particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or      
that Prince So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and         
that Helene had great success and was honored was by the special            
attention of So-and-so, but she did not even see the Emperor, and only      
noticed that he had gone because the ball became livelier after his         
departure. For one of the merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew      
was again her partner. He reminded her of their first encounter in the      
Otradnoe avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep that moonlight        
night, and told her how he had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha         
blushed at that recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if             
there had been something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had         
overheard.                                                                  
  Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked            
meeting someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And            
such was Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and          
even her mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special      
care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest         
and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the              
middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha,      
still out of breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer          
chose her. She was tired and panting and evidently thought of               
declining, but immediately put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder,        
smiling at Prince Andrew.                                                   
  "I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see           
how they keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love           
everybody, and you and I understand it all," and much, much more was        
said in her smile. When her partner left her Natasha ran across the         
room to choose two ladies for the figure.                                   
  "If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she            
will be my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own            
surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.                
  "What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew,        
"but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original,         
that she won't be dancing here a month before she will be                   
married.... Such as she are rare here," he thought, as Natasha,             
readjusting a rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself         
beside him.                                                                 
                                                     {BK6|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up        
to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and          
asked his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not        
answer at once but only looked up with a smile that said                    
reproachfully: "How can you ask such a question?"                           
  "I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince        
Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her          
father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had        
ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one             
becomes completely kind and good and does not believe in the                
possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.                                
  At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the             
position his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and              
absent-minded. A deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing          
by a window he stared over his spectacles seeing no one.                    
  On her way to supper Natasha passed him.                                  
  Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of         
him. She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of         
her own happiness.                                                          
                                                    {BK6|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  "How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?"                      
  Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.      
  "Yes, I am very glad," he said.                                           
  "How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha.          
"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes           
all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people,      
loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another- and so        
they ought all to be happy.                                                 
                                                                            
BK6|CH18                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not          
dwell on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then...          
"Yes, that little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh,        
original, un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That        
was all he thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea        
he set to work.                                                             
  But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for          
work and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work,          
as he often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.                 
  The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented      
all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new        
ideas and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger- one of        
those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to         
the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest          
partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into              
Prince Andrew's room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking.      
He had just heard particulars of that morning's sitting of the Council      
of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically.        
The Emperor's speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such      
as only constitutional monarchs deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said        
that the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the      
government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor      
said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts            
published," recounted Bitski, emphasizing certain words and opening         
his eyes significantly.                                                     
  "Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our         
history," he concluded.                                                     
  Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the               
Council of State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which          
he had attached such importance, and was surprised that this event,         
now that it had taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite      
insignificant. He listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic        
account of it. A very simple thought occurred to him: "What does it         
matter to me or to Bitski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the        
Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?"                       
                                                     {BK6|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest            
Prince Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to            
dine that evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the         
host had said when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the         
intimate home circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested        
Prince Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his           
domestic surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.             
  At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house               
Speranski owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room        
this small house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting        
that of a monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the         
friendly gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already            
assembled at five o'clock. There were no ladies present except              
Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her            
governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin.          
While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a           
ringing staccato laugh- a laugh such as one hears on the stage.             
Someone- it sounded like Speranski- was distinctly ejaculating              
ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous           
laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from a statesman made a      
strange impression on him.                                                  
  He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing               
between two windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres.              
Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast,      
and evidently still the same waistcoat and high white stock he had          
worn at the meeting of the Council of State, stood at the table with a      
beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him. Magnitski,                  
addressing himself to Speranski, was relating an anecdote, and              
Speranski was laughing in advance at what Magnitski was going to            
say. When Prince Andrew entered the room Magnitski's words were             
again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep bass guffaw as he           
munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed softly with a          
hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato manner.           
  Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince          
Andrew.                                                                     
  "Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he            
went on, turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have          
agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about          
business!" and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.      
                                                    {BK6|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment,         
regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not             
Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared           
mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and           
unattractive.                                                               
  At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed          
to consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before             
Magnitski had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate         
something still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the      
state service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in          
this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely           
accepted that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good        
humored ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning         
a deaf dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so        
too. Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable        
for the stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering,             
broke into the conversation and began excitedly talking of the              
abuses that existed under the former order of things- threatening to        
give a serious turn to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing        
Stolypin about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and           
the talk reverted to its former lively tone.                                
  Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find               
amusement in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his         
wish, tried to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety           
seemed to Prince Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's                 
high-pitched voice struck him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter      
grated on him like a false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and            
feared that he would be a damper on the spirits of the company, but no      
one took any notice of his being out of harmony with the general mood.      
They all seemed very gay.                                                   
  He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his               
remarks were tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the           
water, and he could not jest with them.                                     
  There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was             
witty and might have been funny, but it lacked just that something          
which is the salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a        
thing existed.                                                              
                                                    {BK6|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He              
patted the little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that         
gesture, too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.                            
  The men remained at table over their port- English fashion. In the        
midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish           
affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to         
express a contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish      
to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a        
story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few      
moments all were silent.                                                    
  Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine          
and, remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair,"          
passed it to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk        
loudly went into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier         
were handed to Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as          
he had left the room the general merriment stopped and the guests           
began to converse sensibly and quietly with one another.                    
  "Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his            
study. "A wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski        
immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses          
in French which he had composed about various well-known Petersburg         
people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When the              
verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his        
leave.                                                                      
  "Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski.                         
                                                    {BK6|CH18 ^paragraph 20}
  "I promised to go to a reception."                                        
  They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those                
mirrorlike, impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of      
him to have expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own        
activities connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance        
to what Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang          
in Prince Andrew's ears long after he had left the house.                   
  When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in          
Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something            
new. He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of        
his project of army reform, which had been accepted for                     
consideration and which they were trying to pass over in silence            
simply because another, a very poor one, had already been prepared and      
submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee of      
which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully and at what            
length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at           
those meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all that related to         
the gist of the business was evaded. He recalled his labors on the          
Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had translated the articles of         
the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of             
himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his               
occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he remembered the        
peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to them the      
Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished          
that he could have spent so much time on such useless work.                 
                                                                            
BK6|CH19                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited          
before, and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed             
acquaintance at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness           
which demanded the call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl         
who had left such a pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.       
  Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a               
dark-blue house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier      
than in her ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him          
as an old friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he           
had formerly judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of               
excellent, simple, and kindly people. The old count's hospitality           
and good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a             
pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrew could not refuse to         
stay to dinner. "Yes," he thought, "they are capital people, who of         
course have not the slightest idea what a treasure they possess in          
Natasha; but they are kindly folk and form the best possible setting        
for this strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!"          
  In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely      
alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,         
that in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had      
already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no         
longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered        
it found in it a new enjoyment.                                             
  After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the             
clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window               
talking to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he      
ceased speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had         
thought impossible for him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and           
something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the      
same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was           
ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His        
disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The           
chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast             
between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that      
limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This             
contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.                     
  As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how          
he liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling        
that she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and         
said he liked her singing as he liked everything she did.                   
                                                     {BK6|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to           
bed from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having           
lit his candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again           
not at all troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and         
joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own             
fresh air. It did not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha;      
he was not thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself,           
and in consequence all life appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive,      
why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with      
all its joys, is open to me?" said he to himself. And for the first         
time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future.      
He decided that he must attend to his son's education by finding a          
tutor and putting the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire            
from the service and go abroad, and see England, Switzerland and            
Italy. "I must use my freedom while I feel so much strength and             
youth in me," he said to himself. "Pierre was right when he said one        
must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and      
now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one         
has life one must live and be happy!" thought he.                           
                                                                            
BK6|CH20                                                                    
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in        
Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an                  
immaculate brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed             
forward over his temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.            
  "I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately           
she could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more          
fortunate with you," he said with a smile.                                  
  "What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service."                     
  "I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this         
with perfect conviction that this information could not but be              
agreeable), "and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own         
and my wife's friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished        
to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to      
supper."                                                                    
  Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as           
the Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an              
invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at           
his house a small but select company, and why this would give him           
pleasure, and why though he grudged spending money on cards or              
anything harmful, he was prepared to run into some expense for the          
sake of good society- that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to         
come.                                                                       
                                                     {BK6|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
  "But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten             
minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is         
coming. He is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you          
will do me the favor."                                                      
  Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at        
the Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.               
  Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were        
really for their guests' arrival.                                           
  In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and             
pictures and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely             
buttoned up in his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to           
her that one always could and should be acquainted with people above        
one, because only then does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.        
  "You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I      
managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years      
but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only        
waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to      
be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to        
her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how            
have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my               
aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be conscientious         
and methodical."                                                            
                                                    {BK6|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and        
paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak      
woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity,        
what it was ein Mann zu sein.* Vera at the same time smiling with a         
sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the      
same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did.             
Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera,        
judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation,         
supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are               
conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.            
-                                                                           
  *To be a man.                                                             
-                                                                           
  Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her         
lace fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on      
the lips.                                                                   
                                                    {BK6|CH20 ^paragraph 15}
  "The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he                
continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas.                      
  "Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for         
society."                                                                   
  "Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg,                
pointing to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.                        
  Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced          
at one another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally      
claiming the honor of this visit.                                           
  "This is what what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,"           
thought Berg. "This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself."       
                                                    {BK6|CH20 ^paragraph 20}
  "But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests,"        
said Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say      
to different people."                                                       
  Berg smiled again.                                                        
  "It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine                    
conversation," said he.                                                     
  They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it           
was impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,        
neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange         
that Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an          
armchair or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently            
painfully undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor      
to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry          
by moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began          
their evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts to            
entertain their guest.                                                      
  Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be              
entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once             
began accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation         
was required, interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the             
question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the         
general subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made         
him to take part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had        
declined them. Though the conversation was very incoherent and Vera         
was angry at the intrusion of the masculine element, both husband           
and wife felt with satisfaction that, even if only one guest was            
present, their evening had begun very well and was as like as two peas      
to every other evening party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.       
                                                    {BK6|CH20 ^paragraph 25}
  Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of      
condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After        
Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the      
Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other         
evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of            
satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing             
room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of                
dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody      
always has it, especially so the general, who admired the apartment,        
patted Berg on the shoulder, and with parental authority superintended      
the setting out of the table for boston. The general sat down by Count      
Ilya Rostov, who was next to himself the most important guest. The old      
people sat with the old, the young with the young, and the hostess          
at the tea table, on which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a        
silver cake basket as the Panins had at their party. Everything was         
just as it was everywhere else.                                             
                                                                            
BK6|CH21                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston         
with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table          
he happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious      
change that had come over her since the ball, She was silent, and           
not only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from               
plainness by her look of gentle indifference to everything around.          
  "What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She        
was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without        
looking at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her.           
After playing out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking          
five tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who         
had entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again      
at Natasha.                                                                 
  "What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater           
surprise.                                                                   
  Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her            
with a look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was          
looking up at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid         
breathing. And the bright glow of some inner fire that had been             
suppressed was again alight in her. She was completely transformed and      
from a plain girl had again become what she had been at the ball.           
  Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and         
youthful expression in his friend's face.                                   
                                                     {BK6|CH21 ^paragraph 5}
  Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now          
with his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of        
the six rubbers he watched her and his friend.                              
  "Something very important is happening between them," thought             
Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him         
and made him neglect the game.                                              
  After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use           
playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was         
talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was              
saying something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and,        
asking whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them.             
Vera, having noticed Prince Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided         
that at a party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the              
tender passion were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when         
Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation with him about                
feelings in general and about her sister. With so intellectual a guest      
as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt that she had to employ      
her diplomatic tact.                                                        
  When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried        
away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed              
embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened with him.                         
  "What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so      
discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a         
glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her          
attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself),             
"love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is            
what I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?"                      
                                                    {BK6|CH21 ^paragraph 10}
  "I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a            
sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to        
be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed            
that the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to      
be," he added, and looked up Pierre who was just approaching them.          
  "Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera- mentioning      
"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing,             
imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of      
"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times- "in        
our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted      
often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that            
Natalie is very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie         
caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about        
to rise, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile:                 
  "I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but        
till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you             
know, Count," she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who,         
between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness..."          
(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).                     
  Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.                                
  "You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.                    
                                                    {BK6|CH21 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, I know him..."                                                      
  "I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"              
  "Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew,              
blushing unexpectedly.                                                      
  "Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le           
cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.* Don't you think so?"                 
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK6|CH21 ^paragraph 20}
  *"Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."                                
-                                                                           
  "Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural      
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very               
careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of         
these jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew           
him aside.                                                                  
  "Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with          
surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.          
  "I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You         
know that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic              
gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he        
loved.) "I... but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange      
light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew          
approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince           
Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.              
                                                    {BK6|CH21 ^paragraph 25}
  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.                                   
                                                                            
BK6|CH22                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with      
the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.                            
  Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came,         
and without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not          
only in the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha,        
but in the whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something             
important that was bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and        
sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and         
timidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as soon          
as he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid          
of being in the way when she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a         
panic of expectation, when she remained alone with him for a moment.        
Prince Andrew surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wanted        
to say something to her but could not bring himself to do so.               
  In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to      
Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"                                        
  "Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't            
talk about that," said Natasha.                                             
  But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now                 
frightened, lay long time in her mother's bed gazing straight before        
her. She told her how he had complimented her, how he told her he           
was going abroad, asked her where they were going to spend the summer,      
and then how he had asked her about Boris.                                  
                                                     {BK6|CH22 ^paragraph 5}
  "But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said.          
"Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm            
with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real              
thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?"                                         
  "No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now          
go!"                                                                        
  "All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy!            
Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before," she said,                 
surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And      
could we ever have thought!..."                                             
  It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince           
Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she        
feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very         
man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and      
of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.                       
  "And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg         
while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that         
ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this!        
Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."                
                                                    {BK6|CH22 ^paragraph 10}
  "What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..."        
said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince              
Andrew had written in Natasha's album.                                      
  "Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"                  
  "Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'"            
said her mother.                                                            
  "Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha,           
shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.              
  At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and               
telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her        
his wife.                                                                   
                                                    {BK6|CH22 ^paragraph 15}
  That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French         
ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of          
late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies           
and gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the          
rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and            
morose air.                                                                 
  Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous               
depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the           
intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly         
been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had          
begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark              
thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener than         
before. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between his             
protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by the             
contrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried equally        
to avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and Prince Andrew;      
and again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with         
eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and he            
forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to           
drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after      
he had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting upstairs in a          
shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of the           
Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy with         
tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.                  
  "Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air.         
"And I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book          
with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy          
people look at their work.                                                  
  Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life        
on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,      
smiled at him with the egotism of joy.                                      
  "Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it               
yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything      
like it before. I am in love, my friend!"                                   
                                                    {BK6|CH22 ^paragraph 20}
  Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person            
down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.                                      
  "With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.                                     
  "Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,        
but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and        
suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in        
the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live      
without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why           
don't you speak?"                                                           
  "I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and             
beginning to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it....            
That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend,      
I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry,               
marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you."          
  "But what of her?"                                                        
                                                    {BK6|CH22 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                      
                                                    {BK6|CH22 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                               
                                                                            
BK6|CH23                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to         
obtain this he started for the country next day.                            
  His father received his son's communication with external composure,      
but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to          
alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life         
was already ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want        
to," thought the old man, "then they might do as they please." With         
his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for                 
important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole         
matter.                                                                     
  In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards        
birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young      
as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special            
stress on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son            
whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly           
and finally," the father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg        
you to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as           
you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your          
love or passion or obstinacy- as you please- is still as great, marry!      
And that's my last word on it. Mind, the last..." concluded the             
prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make him alter his        
decision.                                                                   
  Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his                 
feelings, or his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that          
he (the old prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to        
conform to his father's wish- to propose, and postpone the wedding for      
a year.                                                                     
  Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs,         
Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.                                       
                                                     {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski        
all day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the        
same. Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that              
Prince Andrew had gone to see his father, could not explain his             
absence to herself.                                                         
  Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out           
anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and             
listless; she wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in        
the evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed          
to her that everybody knew about her disappointment and was laughing        
at her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound          
to her vanity intensified her misery.                                       
  Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly         
began to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not        
know why it is being punished.                                              
  The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to        
her mother's words, suddenly interrupted her:                               
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 10}
  "Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about           
it! He just came and then left off, left off..."                            
  Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and         
went on quietly:                                                            
  "And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I        
have now become quite calm, quite calm."                                    
  The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which        
she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the      
mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she        
had abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went      
to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud                  
resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished           
her first exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and            
sang a musical phrase that particularly pleased her. She listened           
joyfully (as though she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes      
reverberating, filling the whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying           
away; and all at once she felt cheerful. "What's the good of making so      
much of it? Things are nice as it is," she said to herself, and she         
began walking up and down the room, not stepping simply on the              
resounding parquet but treading with each step from the heel to the         
toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of shoes) and listening to the      
regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe as gladly as she had to        
the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it.          
"There, that's me!" the expression of her face seemed to say as she         
caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too! I need nobody."          
  A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room           
but she would not let him, and having closed the door behind him            
continued her walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite           
mood- love of, and delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha          
is!" she said again, speaking as some third, collective, male               
person. "Pretty, a good voice, young, and in nobody's way if only they      
leave her in peace." But however much they left her in peace she could      
not now be at peace, and immediately felt this.                             
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 15}
  In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and      
then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but           
did not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When           
she saw herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for            
certain, though she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.        
  Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.                     
  "Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is         
unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..."           
  Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room          
with an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his            
face brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat        
down beside the sofa.                                                       
  "It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but         
Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question,           
obviously in haste to say what he had to.                                   
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 20}
  "I have not been to see all this time because I have been at my           
father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I            
only got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to          
have a talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause.           
  The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.                            
  "I am at your disposal," she murmured.                                    
  Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:          
something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared          
straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.                              
  "At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought.                 
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 25}
  Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she           
was not mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be        
decided.                                                                    
  "Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper.           
  Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew           
and at her mother and went out.                                             
  "I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said            
Prince Andrew.                                                              
  The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.                   
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 30}
  "Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent,           
looking into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is              
agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband...      
I hope... but it will depend on her...."                                    
  "I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it          
to me?" said Prince Andrew.                                                 
  "Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and            
with a mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips        
to his forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him      
as a son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man.      
"I am sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your           
father..."                                                                  
  "My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express          
condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a        
year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew.                
  "It is true that Natasha is still young, but- so long as that?..."        
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 35}
  "It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh.                      
  "I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room.           
  "Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter.       
  Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on        
the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering      
something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped      
up and flew to her.                                                         
  "Well, Mamma?... Well?..."                                                
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 40}
  "Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess,           
coldly it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and         
reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.                  
  Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When           
she came in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger      
has now become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately        
answered, "Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than               
everything in the world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast        
eyes.                                                                       
  "I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?"      
  He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned                
expression of her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you         
cannot but know? Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?"      
  She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.         
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 45}
  "Do you love me?"                                                         
  "Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed           
loudly and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.        
  "What is it? What's the matter?"                                          
  "Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent          
over closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether      
she might, and then kissed him.                                             
  Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find      
in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly         
changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of          
desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness,          
fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful         
sense of the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present            
feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger        
and more serious.                                                           
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 50}
  "Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked            
Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes.                                 
  "Is it possible that I- the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called         
me," thought Natasha- "is it possible that I am now to be the wife and      
the equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father             
looks up to? Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no            
more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies         
a responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he           
ask me?"                                                                    
  "No," she replied, but she had not understood his question.               
  "Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already          
been through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know      
yourself."                                                                  
  Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing          
to take in the meaning of his words.                                        
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 55}
  "Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued          
Prince Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask         
you to make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall      
remain a secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or            
should you come to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural            
smile.                                                                      
  "Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that            
from the very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she         
cried, quite convinced that she spoke the truth.                            
  "In a year you will learn to know yourself...."                           
  "A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that        
the marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a         
year?..."                                                                   
  Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.         
Natasha did not hear him.                                                   
                                                    {BK6|CH23 ^paragraph 60}
  "And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply,         
but his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.         
  "It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and          
again burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's                   
impossible, it's awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in        
it a look of commiseration and perplexity.                                  
  "No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears.        
"I am so happy."                                                            
  The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed           
couple their blessing.                                                      
  From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as             
Natasha's affianced lover.                                                  
                                                                            
BK6|CH24                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXIV                                                              
-                                                                           
  No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to              
Bolkonski was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said        
that as he was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole         
burden of it; that he had given his word and bound himself forever,         
but that he did not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom.      
If after six months she felt that she did not love him she would            
have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her            
parents wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came         
every day to the Rostovs', but did not behave to Natasha as an              
affianced lover: he did not use the familiar thou, but said you to          
her, and kissed only her hand. After their engagement, quite                
different, intimate, and natural relations sprang up between them.          
It was as if they had not known each other till now. Both liked to          
recall how they had regarded each other when as yet they were               
nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite different            
beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At first        
the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew;          
he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha             
trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all            
that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of      
them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to           
be. After a few days they grew accustomed to him, and without               
restraint in his presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he      
took his part. He could talk about rural economy with the count,            
fashions with the countess and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork      
with Sonya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his        
presence expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the      
evident omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe      
and their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and        
Prince Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and           
Andrew's encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents          
betokening that it had to be.                                               
  In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always          
accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting      
together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and        
go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely      
spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to         
speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which         
she constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his            
son. Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did now- Natasha                    
particularly liked it in him- and said that his son would not live          
with them.                                                                  
  "Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone.                            
  "I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..."             
  "How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing         
his thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding          
fault with us."                                                             
                                                     {BK6|CH24 ^paragraph 5}
  Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask        
his advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old            
countess sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting             
frightened lest she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for      
leaving them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew      
spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him            
with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed      
attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in                 
perplexity: "What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover          
something by looking at me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?"      
Sometimes she fell into one of the mad, merry moods characteristic          
of her, and then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince          
Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned             
himself entirely to his laughter, and after such a laugh she always         
felt nearer to him. Natasha would have been completely happy if the         
thought of the separation awaiting her and drawing near had not             
terrified her, just as the mere thought of it made him turn pale and        
cold.                                                                       
  On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought         
with him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball.      
Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the           
countess, and Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya,      
thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.                      
  "You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?"       
  "Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd."                                      
  And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of      
his absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.      
                                                    {BK6|CH24 ^paragraph 10}
  "Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known           
him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,"            
Prince Andrew said with sudden seriousness- "I am going away and            
heaven knows what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know         
I am not to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when      
I am not here..."                                                           
  "What can happen?"                                                        
  "Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you,         
Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for          
advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but          
he has a heart of gold."                                                    
  Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew          
himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would         
act on Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that      
day, dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not                 
understanding what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking        
leave, he kissed her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a      
tone that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and           
which he remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone;      
but for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no                
interest in anything and only saying now and then, "Oh, why did he          
go away?"                                                                   
  But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around      
her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and            
became her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy,      
as a child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of        
face.                                                                       
                                                                            
BK6|CH25                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXV                                                               
-                                                                           
  During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas               
Bolkonski's health and temper became much worse. He grew still more         
irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of         
his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out      
her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible.      
Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys- her               
nephew, little Nicholas, and religion- and these were the favorite          
subjects of the prince's attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken          
of he would bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or           
the petting and spoiling of children. "You want to make him"- little        
Nicholas- "into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants      
a son and not an old maid," he would say. Or, turning to                    
Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary's presence        
how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them.      
  He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her,           
but it cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame              
toward her, or could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of        
it all, be unjust? And what is justice? The princess never thought          
of that proud word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for      
her in one clear and simple law- the law of love and self-sacrifice         
taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself        
was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other          
people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.                       
  During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had            
been gay, gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known        
him for a long time past. She felt that something had happened to him,      
but he said nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a          
long talk with his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed        
that before his departure they were dissatisfied with one another.          
  Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend      
Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls            
dream) of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in              
mourning for her own brother, killed in Turkey.                             
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK6|CH25 ^paragraph 5}
  Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.        
  Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a        
special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and            
your excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone,         
can- I will not say comfort us- but save us from despair. Religion          
alone can explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend:        
why, for what cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in        
life- not merely harming no one but necessary to the happiness of           
others- are called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons,      
or such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left               
living. The first death I saw, and one I shall never forget- that of        
my dear sister-in-law- left that impression on me. Just as you ask          
destiny why your splendid brother had to die, so I asked why that           
angel Lise, who not only never wronged anyone, but in whose soul there      
were never any unkind thoughts, had to die. And what do you think,          
dear friend? Five years have passed since then, and already I, with my      
petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in        
what way that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness          
of the Creator, whose every action, though generally                        
incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite love         
for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically          
innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother's duties. As a        
young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been          
so as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly        
Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably           
she will there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not          
to speak of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the            
most beneficent influence on me and on my brother in spite of all           
our grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not        
occur to me; I should then have dismissed them with horror, but now         
they are very clear and certain. I write all this to you, dear friend,      
only to convince you of the Gospel truth which has become for me a          
principle of life: not a single hair of our heads will fall without         
His will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for us, and        
so whatever befalls us is for our good.                                     
  You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my      
wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You            
will be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte!           
The case is this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he        
cannot stand any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This              
irritability is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions.      
He cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal         
terms with all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own,      
the grandson of the Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite                
indifferent to politics, but from my father's remarks and his talks         
with Michael Ivanovich I know all that goes on in the world and             
especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at            
Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not accepted as a great         
man, still less as Emperor of France. And my father cannot stand this.      
It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his political views            
that my father is reluctant to speak of going to Moscow; for he             
foresees the encounters that would result from his way of expressing        
his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might derive            
from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the disputes        
about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will be          
decided very shortly.                                                       
  Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother              
Andrew's absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much          
of late. After his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his             
spirits. He has again become as I used to know him when a child: kind,      
affectionate, with that heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has      
realized, it seems to me, that life is not over for him. But                
together with this mental change he has grown physically much               
weaker. He has become thinner and more nervous. I am anxious about him      
and glad he is taking this trip abroad which the doctors recommended        
long ago. I hope it will cure him. You write that in Petersburg he          
is spoken of as one of the most active, cultivated, and capable of the      
young men. Forgive my vanity as a relation, but I never doubted it.         
The good he has done to everybody here, from his peasants up to the         
gentry, is incalculable. On his arrival in Petersburg he received only      
his due. I always wonder at the way rumors fly from Petersburg to           
Moscow, especially such false ones as that you write about- I mean the      
report of my brother's betrothal to the little Rostova. I do not think      
my brother will ever marry again, and certainly not her; and this is        
why: first, I know that though he rarely speaks about the wife he           
has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart for         
him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a           
stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl is not the        
kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think he would        
choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am               
running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. Good-by,          
my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My            
dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.                      
                                                      MARY                  
                                                                            
BK6|CH26                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXVI                                                              
-                                                                           
  In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected          
letter from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her               
strange and surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to           
Natasha Rostova. The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his           
betrothed and tender and confiding affection for his sister. He             
wrote that he had never loved as he did now and that only now did he        
understand and know what life was. He asked his sister to forgive           
him for not having told her of his resolve when he had last visited         
Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it to his father. He had not            
done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her father to give his            
consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt of his                 
displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides," he wrote, "the         
matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father then      
insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months, half of that      
period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever. If the          
doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in Russia,        
but as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You know        
me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have            
been and always shall be independent; but to go against his will and        
arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a             
short time, would destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him        
about the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand        
him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and      
whether there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four        
months."                                                                    
  After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave           
the letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her           
quietly:                                                                    
  "Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't          
be long- I shall soon set him free."                                        
  The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her         
speak and, raising his voice more and more, cried:                          
  "Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich,      
eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell        
him that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little              
Nicholas' stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He            
mustn't be without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more             
women are wanted in my house- let him marry and live by himself.            
Perhaps you will go and live with him too?" he added, turning to            
Princess Mary. "Go in heavens name! Go out into the frost... the            
frost... the frost!                                                         
                                                     {BK6|CH26 ^paragraph 5}
  After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the           
matter. But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior          
found expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former            
pretexts for irony a fresh one was now added- allusions to stepmothers      
and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.                                 
  "Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a        
splendid princess!"                                                         
  And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary             
noticed that her father was really associating more and more with           
the Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his      
letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to         
the idea.                                                                   
  Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and                
religion were Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that,      
since everyone must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the               
profoundest depths of her heart had a hidden dream and hope that            
supplied the chief consolation of her life. This comforting dream           
and hope were given her by God's folk- the half-witted and other            
pilgrims who visited her without the prince's knowledge. The longer         
she lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the         
greater was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek             
enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling,      
and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary,              
sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she died, but that      
was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness to another woman.           
Her father objected to this because he wanted a more distinguished and      
wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered and         
tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls,         
for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant. Not         
only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God, came            
down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is         
a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it.          
"How is it that no one realizes this?" thought Princess Mary. "No           
one except these despised God's folk who, wallet on back, come to me        
by the back door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear          
of ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave            
family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in order without        
clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place to place           
under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for all-           
for those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one:          
higher than that life and truth there is no life or truth!"                 
  There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty           
called Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot         
and worn heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her.          
Once, when in a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia        
was talking of her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found         
the true path of life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force        
that she resolved to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone      
to sleep Princess Mary thought about this for a long time, and at last      
made up her mind that, strange as it might seem, she must go on a           
pilgrimage. She disclosed this thought to no one but to her confessor,      
Father Akinfi, the monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise      
of a present for the pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's           
complete costume for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough           
coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching the chest of drawers         
containing this secret treasure, Princess Mary paused, uncertain            
whether the time had not already come to put her project into               
execution.                                                                  
                                                    {BK6|CH26 ^paragraph 10}
  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.      
                                                                            
BK7                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                             BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11                          
                                                                            
BK7|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor- idleness- was a      
condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man        
has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race           
not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our              
brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both          
idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we         
are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though            
idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the             
conditions of man's primitive blessedness. And such a state of              
obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class-         
the military. The chief attraction of military service has consisted        
and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.            
  Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full           
when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment,          
in which he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from           
Denisov.                                                                    
  Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow           
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked      
and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was         
well contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters         
from home more frequent complaints from his mother that their               
affairs were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it         
was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his old parents.       
  Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to          
take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the            
entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt         
that sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life,      
with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its             
accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society,         
and with Sonya's love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully         
difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold,            
formal letters in French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending:           
"Your obedient son," which said nothing of when he would return. In         
1810 he received letters from his parents, in which they told him of        
Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in         
a year's time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter         
grieved and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that        
Natasha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family,         
should be lost to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of          
view, he regretted not to have been there to show that fellow               
Bolkonski that connection with him was no such great honor after            
all, and that if he loved Natasha he might dispense with permission         
from his dotard father. For a moment he hesitated whether he should         
not apply for leave in order to see Natasha before she was married,         
but then came the maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and             
about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off.        
But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from his               
mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that letter             
persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take         
matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and          
they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and               
trusted Mitenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody            
took advantage of him and things were going from bad to worse. "For         
God's sake, I implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make          
me and the whole family wretched," wrote the countess.                      
  This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a               
matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.                    
                                                      {BK7|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any        
rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but             
after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely      
vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and         
when he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka      
(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who          
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was             
going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he      
would go away without having heard from the staff- and this interested      
him extremely- whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive      
the Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to          
think that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the      
Polish Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had      
betted he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it        
seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish         
Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had             
given one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would          
take place without him- he knew he must go away from this good, bright      
world to somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week         
later he obtained his leave. His hussar comrades- not only those of         
his own regiment, but the whole brigade- gave Rostov a dinner to which      
the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were         
two bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with          
Major Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped               
Rostov; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted      
"hurrah!" and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as           
far as the first post station.                                              
  During the first half of the journey- from Kremenchug to Kiev- all        
Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with         
the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to            
forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to           
wonder anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would          
find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached         
it- far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law      
by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the            
square of the distance. At the last post station before Otradnoe he         
gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran                   
breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.                         
  After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of               
unsatisfied expectation- the feeling that "everything is just the           
same, so why did I hurry?"- Nicholas began to settle down in his old        
home world. His father and mother were much the same, only a little         
older. What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional         
discord, which there used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found      
out, was due to the bad state of their affairs. Sonya was nearly            
twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and promised nothing more          
than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness and        
love from the time Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable         
love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha         
surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen,          
merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking.      
As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed              
whenever he looked at her.                                                  
  "You're not the same at all," he said.                                    
  "How? Am I uglier?"                                                       
                                                     {BK7|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  "On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to          
her.                                                                        
  "Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.                                 
  She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit        
to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.                                 
  "Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy          
now."                                                                       
  "Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And        
are you very much in love?"                                                 
                                                     {BK7|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  "How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris,         
with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel      
at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and         
I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before."                         
  Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the             
marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with                  
exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and            
that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father's         
will, and that she herself wished it so.                                    
  "You don't at all understand," she said.                                  
  Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.                                  
  Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem          
at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband.           
She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This        
amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship              
skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially      
as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him          
that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage.      
                                                     {BK7|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  "Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had         
touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his                
surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her         
soul she too had doubts about this marriage.                                
  "You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince         
Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a        
daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come          
before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His            
health is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach               
importance to her being so bright: that's because she's living through      
the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every            
time we receive a letter from him! However, God grant that                  
everything turns out well!" (She always ended with these words.) "He        
is an excellent man!"                                                       
                                                                            
BK7|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull.          
He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid      
business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw         
off this burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his          
arrival he went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as      
to where he was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of        
everything. But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew        
even less than the frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation      
and the examination of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long.         
The village elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were      
waiting in the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young         
count's voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and        
then words of abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.        
  "Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm        
not my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on.                                
  Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red      
in the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff      
of the neck and applied his foot and knee to him behind with great          
agility at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off!         
Never let me see your face here again, you villain!"                        
  Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the            
shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for             
culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the             
town, used to hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe,            
hiding from Mitenka, knew of its protective qualities.)                     
  Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and                  
frightened faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar           
was boiling and where the steward's high bedstead stood with its            
patchwork quilt.                                                            
                                                      {BK7|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by      
with resolute strides and went into the house.                              
  The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened          
at the lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would        
certainly improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect      
this excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his        
door on tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.          
  Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed      
smile, said to him:                                                         
  "But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has      
told me all about it."                                                      
  "I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything      
in this crazy world."                                                       
                                                     {BK7|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  "You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they        
were carried forward- and you did not look at the other page."              
  "Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have      
done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again."           
  "No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he           
had mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his              
children, but he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to          
attend to the business. I am old. I..."                                     
  "No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I              
understand it all less than you do."                                        
  "Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings          
forward from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a        
'corner' and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to             
another page I don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after      
that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess           
called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from         
Anna Mikhaylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he             
thought of doing with it.                                                   
                                                     {BK7|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  "This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I             
don't like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were           
our friends and poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and        
by so doing caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After             
that, young Rostov took no further part in any business affairs, but        
devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new         
pursuit- the chase- for which his father kept a large establishment.        
                                                                            
BK7|CH3                                                                     
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts                 
congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had               
thickened and its bright green stood out sharply against the                
brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and               
against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded         
ravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still been           
green islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and          
bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had already         
half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to             
scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best        
time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young             
sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but          
were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give      
them a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go      
on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was        
an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.                                         
  All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the           
air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began      
to thaw. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown,         
looked out of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for        
hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth         
without any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping,      
microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the              
garden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the freshly           
fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black         
and glistened like poppy seed and at a short distance merged into           
the dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy      
porch. There was a smell of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a            
black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got          
up on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like a           
hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and      
mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from the      
garden path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch         
with lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.                   
  "O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call             
which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round           
the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray,        
wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian        
fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence        
and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his        
Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This             
scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel,      
disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all      
the same his serf and huntsman.                                             
  "Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the            
weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away        
by that irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all         
his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his         
mistress.                                                                   
  "What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep             
bass, deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing- and two           
flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who           
was silent. "Can you resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.            
                                                      {BK7|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  "It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked                 
Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.                                 
  Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.                                
  "I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a            
minute's pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure.      
They were howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom         
they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small      
place a mile and a half from the house.)                                    
  "We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me          
with Uvarka."                                                               
  "As you please."                                                          
                                                     {BK7|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  "Then put off feeding them."                                              
  "Yes, sir."                                                               
  Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas'           
big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was        
like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and          
surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual          
stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for        
fear of breaking something in the master's apartment, and he                
hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that         
ceiling, out into the open under the sky once more.                         
  Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion         
that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting),             
Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was           
about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her        
hair or finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped        
round her. Petya ran in at the same time.                                   
  "You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you         
wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you              
couldn't help going."                                                       
                                                     {BK7|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as          
he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and          
Petya. "We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for           
you."                                                                       
  "You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair;      
you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said           
nothing to us about it."                                                    
  "'No barrier bars a Russian's path'- we'll go!" shouted Petya.            
  "But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.        
  "Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively.            
"Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my          
dogs," she added to the huntsman.                                           
                                                     {BK7|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                                                             
                                                                            
BK7|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting                 
establishment but had now handed it all completely over to his son's        
care, being in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September,            
prepared to go out with the others.                                         
  In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch.               
Nicholas, with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no         
time for attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were         
trying to tell him something. He had a look at all the details of           
the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the           
quarry, mounted his chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of      
borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to the      
Otradnoe wood. The old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called               
Viflyanka, was led by the groom in attendance on him, while the             
count himself was to drive in a small trap straight to a spot reserved      
for him.                                                                    
  They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and          
whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and      
more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash             
belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and          
thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.                                            
  Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his      
business. his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the      
fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,        
along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.                    
  The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and         
then splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky           
still seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the      
air was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a              
huntsman, the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a      
straggling hound could be heard.                                            
                                                      {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders            
with dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In             
front rode a fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray              
mustache.                                                                   
  "Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.         
  "That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was         
a distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their         
neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good        
thing you're going. That's it! Come on! (This was "Uncle's" favorite        
expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins      
are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll            
take the cubs from under your very nose."                                   
  "That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked               
Nicholas.                                                                   
  The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas            
rode on side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide      
her eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed      
by Petya who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and          
by a groom appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing,            
whipped and pulled at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on      
her black Arabchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.       
                                                     {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  "Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not      
like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.             
  "Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya.                   
  "Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds,"         
said "Uncle" sternly.                                                       
  "Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha,         
referring to her favorite hound.                                            
  "In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought      
Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel         
the distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha            
understood it.                                                              
                                                     {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  "You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said.            
"We'll go to our places and won't budge."                                   
  "A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you         
don't fall off your horse," he added, "because- that's it, come on!-        
you've nothing to hold on to."                                              
  The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards        
off, the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally           
settled with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having        
shown Natasha where she was to stand- a spot where nothing could            
possibly run out- went round above the ravine.                              
  "Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and      
don't let her slip!"                                                        
  "That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he                
shouted, answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi.             
Karay was a shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having           
tackled a big wolf unaided. They all took up their places.                  
                                                     {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as         
not to be late, and the hunstmen had not yet reached their places when      
Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove      
up with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for      
him, where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and          
fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek,        
well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray,         
like himself. His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov,        
though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well,      
and rode to the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged      
his reins, settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was          
ready, looked about with a smile.                                           
  Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old              
horseman now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three      
formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master        
and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred           
paces farther along the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's           
other groom, a daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the         
hunt, by old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled          
brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of his         
favorite Bordeaux.                                                          
  He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were        
rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his            
saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out        
for an outing.                                                              
  The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready,            
kept glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of           
terms for thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in                
expected a pleasant chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through      
the wood (it was plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind         
the count. This person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's              
cloak, with a tall peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who          
went by a woman's name, Nastasya Ivanovna.                                  
  "Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him.           
"If you scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!"                       
                                                     {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  "I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna.                   
  "Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen           
the young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?"                              
  "With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered              
Simon, smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting."          
  "And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the          
count. "She's as good as many a man!"                                       
  "Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!"                            
                                                     {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  "And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?"              
  "Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so          
well that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well         
knowing what would please his master.                                       
  "Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?"                 
  "A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the      
Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight      
when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand              
rubles and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search        
far to find another as smart."                                              
  "To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not      
said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his          
coat to get at his snuffbox.                                                
                                                     {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 35}
  "The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael        
Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had              
distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three              
hounds giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a         
warning finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs...         
" he whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands."                           
  The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked         
into the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space,          
holding the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry          
of the hounds came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's            
hunting horn; the pack joined the first three hounds and they could be      
heard in full cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that                 
indicates that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on      
the hounds, but changed to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others         
rose Daniel's voice, now a deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice      
seemed to fill the whole wood and carried far beyond out into the open      
field.                                                                      
  After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his               
attendant convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into           
two packs: the sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue,             
began to die away in the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood        
past the count, and it was with this that Daniel's voice was heard          
calling ulyulyu. The sounds of both packs mingled and broke apart           
again, but both were becoming more distant.                                 
  Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi           
had entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in           
his hand, opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a              
borzoi that was pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and      
dropped the snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up.           
The count and Simon were looking at him.                                    
  Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly      
approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were         
just in front of them.                                                      
                                                     {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 40}
  The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes      
starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to        
the other side.                                                             
  "Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had            
long fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he            
galloped toward the count.                                                  
  The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a      
wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet         
lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing.        
The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the      
horses' feet at the wolf.                                                   
  The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs                
awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly        
swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish          
of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same             
instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and         
then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the          
whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf      
had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and              
Daniel's chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back         
sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging      
over his flushed, perspiring face.                                          
  "Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the           
count his eyes flashed lightning.                                           
                                                     {BK7|CH4 ^paragraph 45}
  "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.                                                    
                                                                            
BK7|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the           
wolf. By the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of           
the dogs whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of         
the huntsmen approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was            
happening at the copse. He knew that young and old wolves were              
there, that the hounds had separated into two packs, that somewhere         
a wolf was being chased, and that something had gone wrong. He              
expected the wolf to come his way any moment. He made thousands of          
different conjectures as to where and from what side the beast would        
come and how he would set upon it. Hope alternated with despair.            
Several times he addressed a prayer to God that the wolf should come        
his way. He prayed with that passionate and shame-faced feeling with        
which men pray at moments of great excitement arising from trivial          
causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for me?" he said to            
God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask this of Thee,      
but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way and let Karay            
spring at it- in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from over there- and      
seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand times during            
that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the edge of      
the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen undergrowth      
and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap just               
visible above the bush on his right.                                        
  "No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it      
be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am            
always unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed             
rapidly and clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get          
an old wolf, I want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears         
and looking to the left and then to the right and listening to the          
slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.                       
  Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him         
across the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a      
deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped            
for. The height of happiness was reached- and so simply, without            
warning, or noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his            
eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and      
jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path. She was an old            
animal with a gray back and big reddish belly. She ran without              
hurry, evidently feeling sure that no one saw her. Rostov, holding his      
breath, looked round at the borzois. They stood or lay not seeing           
the wolf or understanding the situation. Old Karay had turned his head      
and was angrily searching for fleas, baring his yellow teeth and            
snapping at his hind legs.                                                  
  "Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped      
up, jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay         
finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up          
with quivering tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.              
  "Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf           
approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole             
physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never      
seen before- human eyes fixed upon her- and turning her head a              
little toward Rostov, she paused.                                           
                                                      {BK7|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  "Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to           
say to herself, and she moved forward without again looking round           
and with a quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.                             
  "Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own         
accord his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies        
to head off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still.      
Nicholas did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping,           
nor see the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only         
the wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same                 
direction along the hollow. The first to come into view was Milka,          
with her black markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the             
wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf            
turned its head to face her, and instead of putting on speed as she         
usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs.      
  "Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas.                                        
  The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang               
impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but             
immediately jumped aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her          
teeth, and again rose and bounded forward, followed at the distance of      
a couple of feet by all the borzois, who did not get any closer to          
her.                                                                        
  "She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still           
shouting with a hoarse voice.                                               
                                                     {BK7|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi         
who was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left        
him, stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf,                
galloped heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the            
wolf's lope and the borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay           
had miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front of           
him the wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach         
it. But, coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping          
almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish        
young borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from another leash, rushed         
impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But      
the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone could have expected and,        
gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a             
piercing yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a            
gash in its side.                                                           
  "Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas.                                  
  Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path,           
the old dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within          
five paces of it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her            
eyes on Karay, tucked her tail yet further between her legs, and            
increased her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that something              
happened to Karay- the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they            
rolled together down into a gully just in front of them.                    
  That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully          
with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and        
outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears        
laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest           
moment of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to         
dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up            
from among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge        
of the gully. She clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the         
throat), leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and      
having disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again,         
went forward. Karay, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or            
wounded, climbed with difficulty out of the gully.                          
  "Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair.                              
                                                     {BK7|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  "Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the           
wolf's path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance.         
She was again hemmed in.                                                    
  Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were           
all riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to      
dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward      
again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she      
would be safe.                                                              
  Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the              
ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf,      
and checked his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he         
saw that the horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself      
and ran for safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf      
but straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the              
animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just            
when she had been stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois.               
  Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand      
and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip        
as if it were a flail.                                                      
  Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut,                 
breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body         
and saw Daniel lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to           
seize her by the ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to      
the wolf herself that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed          
back her ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her.              
Daniel rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if         
lying down to rest, fell on the wolf, seizing her by the ears.              
Nicholas was about to stab her, but Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll         
gag her!" and, changing his position, set his foot on the wolf's neck.      
A stick was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a leash,      
as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Daniel rolled her          
over once or twice from side to side.                                       
                                                     {BK7|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a          
shying and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her,      
took her to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had           
killed two of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled        
with their booty and their stories, and all came to look at the             
wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten         
stick between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd          
of dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked           
her bound legs and looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count         
Rostov also rode up and touched the wolf.                                   
  "Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he          
asked Daniel, who was standing near.                                        
  "Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.         
  The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with      
Daniel.                                                                     
  "Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count.                
                                                     {BK7|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable        
smile.                                                                      
                                                                            
BK7|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return         
very soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At              
midday they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with             
young trees. Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his          
whips.                                                                      
  Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood        
alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been         
loosed before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at         
intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving         
tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a         
fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along      
the ravine toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.                      
  He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the        
ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself      
at any moment on the ryefield opposite.                                     
  The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois,         
and Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going      
hard across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew        
close to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and      
sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white           
borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in             
confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying        
their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the              
group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the          
other, a stranger, in a green coat.                                         
  "What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He          
is not 'Uncle's' man."                                                      
                                                      {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without            
strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high             
saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The             
huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that      
spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of         
a fight.                                                                    
  "That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said               
Nicholas' groom.                                                            
  Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode          
at a footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds          
together. Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight         
was going on.                                                               
  Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden           
up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would            
end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and          
rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper.             
While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak            
respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was angry.        
One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.        
  "What has happened?" asked Nicholas.                                      
                                                     {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my         
gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the         
fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want      
a taste of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and          
probably imagining himself still speaking to his foe.                       
  Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and           
Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's,               
Ilagin's, hunting party was.                                                
  The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,            
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.               
  The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel           
and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the          
Rostovs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very             
woods the Rostovs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs      
had chased.                                                                 
  Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of      
moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his             
arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe.          
He rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and         
fully prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish      
his enemy.                                                                  
                                                     {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman        
in a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black            
horse, accompanied by two hunt servants.                                    
  Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and               
courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young          
count's acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised           
his beaver cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and             
would have the man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox          
hunted by someone else's borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted      
with the count and invited him to draw his covert.                          
  Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had         
followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging              
friendly greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver           
cap still higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that           
the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as          
well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much.                          
  To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to          
come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for        
himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and        
the hunt, now doubled, moved on.                                            
  The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt                
servants fell into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov,        
and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying           
not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for           
rivals to their own borzois.                                                
                                                     {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small,                  
pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with            
muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He         
had heard of the swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that                 
beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Milka.                               
  In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the           
year's harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.                  
  "A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she          
swift?"                                                                     
  "That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered        
Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year      
before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So          
in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he          
went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering        
it polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his      
borzois and picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her             
breadth. "That black-spotted one of yours is fine- well shaped!"            
said he.                                                                    
  "Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only         
a full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort          
of borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a        
ruble to anyone who found a hare.                                           
                                                     {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  "I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be        
so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I        
enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he          
again raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what        
one takes, I don't care about that."                                        
  "Of course not!"                                                          
  "Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches        
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not         
so, Count? For I consider that..."                                          
  "A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in,         
who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip        
aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and        
the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)                        
  "Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we         
must ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing        
in Erza and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a           
chance of pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo          
my Milka at once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin            
toward the hare.                                                            
                                                     {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 30}
  "A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had        
sighted the hare- and not without agitation he looked round and             
whistled to Erza.                                                           
  "And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle."             
  The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.               
  "How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your          
borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours           
against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"                            
  "Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily      
by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on      
this red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly         
men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by      
it.                                                                         
                                                     {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 35}
  The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and           
the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were           
far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but        
not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and             
sedately.                                                                   
  "How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces              
toward the whip who had sighted the hare.                                   
  But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming      
next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash           
rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the          
borzois that were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare.        
All the hunt, who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling          
in the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!"galloped        
across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin,      
Nicholas, Natasha, and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they         
went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose         
sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started           
was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at             
once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling          
that resounded from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not          
very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having          
chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and        
rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of      
him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois        
of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the      
first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's      
red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare         
with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had           
seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and           
bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the                   
broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the        
hare.                                                                       
  "Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if          
Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and        
flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached          
him, but when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the           
distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind          
leg.                                                                        
  "Erza, darling! Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did         
not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have           
seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between           
the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast,          
running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the           
hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the             
borzois did not overtake him so quickly.                                    
                                                     {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 40}
  "Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just          
then, and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught      
up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of        
the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off         
the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously,        
sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was          
how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of             
borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the      
crowd of dogs. Only the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a         
pad, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously              
glancing round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He      
spoke without himself knowing whom to or what about. "That's it,            
come on! That's a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the                
thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That's it, come            
on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if he were           
abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and had insulted him,      
and only now had he at last succeeded in justifying himself. "There         
are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it, come on!..."                    
  "Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's          
muddy pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"                        
  "She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"      
said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of               
whether he were heard or not.                                               
  "But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's         
groom.                                                                      
  "Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take        
it," Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop         
and his excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing             
breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set      
everyone's ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the              
others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that         
she must herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone            
else would have been amazed at it at any other time. "Uncle" himself        
twisted up the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse's         
back as if by that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with          
an air of not wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode          
off. The others all followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much      
later were they able to regain their former affectation of                  
indifference. For a long time they continued to look at red Rugay who,      
his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash,      
walked along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene air of a           
conqueror.                                                                  
                                                     {BK7|CH6 ^paragraph 45}
  "Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of          
coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seem to            
Nicholas to be saying.                                                      
  When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to        
him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle"               
deigned to speak to him.                                                    
                                                                            
BK7|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they         
were so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the             
hunting party should spend the night in his little village of               
Mikhaylovna.                                                                
  "And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it,      
come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could           
rest, and the little countess could be driven home in a trap."              
  "Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for         
a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house.      
  Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the          
front porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and           
young, as well as children, popped out from the back entrance to            
have a look at the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha-      
a woman, a lady, and on horseback- raised the curiosity of the serfs        
to such a degree that many of them came up to her, stared her in the        
face, and unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as though        
she were some prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or         
understand what was said about her.                                         
  "Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt            
dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!"                          
                                                      {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  "Goodness gracious! See her knife?..."                                    
  "Isn't she a Tartar!"                                                     
  "How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all,      
addressing Natasha directly.                                                
  "Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which          
stood in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his        
retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should         
take themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made      
to receive the guests and the visitors.                                     
  The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and         
taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch.           
The house, with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean- it      
did not seem that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless- but      
neither was it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of      
fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.                            
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with      
a folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a           
round birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room         
where there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of            
Suvorov, of the host's father and mother, and of himself in military        
uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked        
his visitors to sit down and make themselves at home, and then went         
out of the room. Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and        
lay down on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth.           
Leading from the study was a passage in which a partition with              
ragged curtains could be seen. From behind this came women's                
laughter and whispers. Natasha, Nicholas, and Petya took off their          
wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell           
asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces               
glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another      
(now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no         
longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over           
his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long            
from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a        
pretext ready to account for it.                                            
  After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and      
small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one           
she had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the      
right thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat.         
"Uncle" too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the          
brother's and sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that         
they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the         
merriment.                                                                  
  "That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw            
anyone like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem        
and, with a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another          
that had been cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as        
fresh as ever!                                                              
  Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently          
from the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking        
woman of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered         
carrying a large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality        
in her glance and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and,          
with a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional      
stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and           
throw back her head, this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod        
very lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her        
plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors          
d'oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on the table. When she had           
finished, she stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on         
her face. "Here I am. I am she! Now do you understand 'Uncle'?" her         
expression said to Rostov. How could one help understanding? Not            
only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the meaning of his puckered      
brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips         
when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb             
wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with      
buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead,               
apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards        
she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey,      
and preserves made with sugar.                                              
  All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping,                
gathered and prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a           
smack of Anisya Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness,                    
cleanliness, whiteness, and pleasant smiles.                                
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered        
Natasha first one thing and then another.                                   
  Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten         
such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets,        
or such a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room.                 
  After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of      
past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat        
upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried             
several times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only        
muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so                
lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only            
feared the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause,          
such as often occurs when receiving friends for the first time in           
one's own house, "Uncle," answering a thought that was in his               
visitors' mind, said:                                                       
  "This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come.         
That's it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?"             
  "Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said          
this. Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about         
him from his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province        
"Uncle" had the reputation of being the most honorable and                  
disinterested of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes,      
chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a         
justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused              
public appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on         
his bay gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown      
garden in summer.                                                           
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  "Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?"                                 
  "I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come         
on! I can't make head or tail of it. That's for you- I haven't              
brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter- that's it, come on!          
Open the door, there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?"                  
  The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as         
they called the room for the hunt servants.                                 
  There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the      
door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a        
balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was      
playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and      
now went out into the passage to hear better.                               
  "That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka.           
I'm fond of it," said "Uncle."                                              
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the                  
huntsmen's room when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond      
of such music.                                                              
  "How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some                     
unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the           
sounds pleased him very much.                                               
  "Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's           
tone. "Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"                              
  Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had         
seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that             
moment, seemed to her the acme of musical delight.                          
  "More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the            
balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the      
balalayka to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle"        
sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air         
was repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several             
times and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did         
not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya          
Fedorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.        
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 30}
  "You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely         
like "Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.                  
  "He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an         
energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out- that's it, come on!-        
ought to burst out."                                                        
  "Do you play then?" asked Natasha.                                        
  "Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.                                       
  "Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I          
haven't touched it for a long time. That's it- come on! I've given          
it up."                                                                     
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 35}
  Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her      
errand and brought back the guitar.                                         
  Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping      
the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself        
in his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard,         
arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a      
wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous,         
and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow      
time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the          
street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to         
thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the          
same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole          
being. Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her          
face went laughing out of the room. "Uncle" continued to play               
correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a               
changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had      
just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of         
his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker      
and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers        
over the strings, something seemed to snap.                                 
  "Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he      
had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas,           
Nicholas!" she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What        
is it moves me so?"                                                         
  Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle"        
played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face                
reappeared in the doorway and behind hers other faces...                    
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 40}
      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," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her        
life depended on it.                                                        
  "Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of          
them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow           
struck a naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.            
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 45}
  "Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had      
just struck a chord.                                                        
  Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to            
face "Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with           
her shoulders and struck an attitude.                                       
  Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree      
French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that            
spirit and obtained that manner which the pas de chale* would, one          
would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the          
movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that           
"Uncle" had expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and        
smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that         
had at first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do           
the right thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her.          
-                                                                           
  *The French shawl dance.                                                  
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 50}
-                                                                           
  She did the right thing with such precision, such complete                
precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the            
handkerchief she needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though        
she laughed as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in          
silks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to        
understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother         
and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.                               
  "Well, little countess; that's it- come on!" cried "Uncle," with a        
joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine      
young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it- come on!"         
  "He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling.                             
  "Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha,           
who nodded her head with a happy smile.                                     
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 55}
  "And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new          
train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile      
mean when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is          
as if he thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our        
gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought,      
and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second.        
"Don't dare to think about it," she said to herself, and sat down           
again smilingly beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more.         
  "Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he            
cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:                      
-                                                                           
      As 'twas growing dark last night                                      
      Fell the snow so soft and light...                                    
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 60}
-                                                                           
  "Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that        
the whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune             
comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which      
exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the           
unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily             
good. Natasha was in ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to      
give up learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked            
"Uncle" for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song.            
  After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been          
sent to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count        
and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious,            
said one of the men.                                                        
  Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two        
traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped             
Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness.        
He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be          
crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent              
huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns.                                    
  "Good-by, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness- not the      
voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas      
growing dark last night.                                                    
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 65}
  In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a      
cheerful smell of smoke.                                                    
  "What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto      
the highroad.                                                               
  "Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?"                              
  "No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered         
Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long      
while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but      
only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.                           
  What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly         
caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did         
they all find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were            
nearing home she suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark        
last night- the tune of which she had all the way been trying to get        
and had at last caught.                                                     
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 70}
  "Got it?" said Nicholas.                                                  
  "What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.      
  They were fond of asking one another that question.                       
  "I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I           
thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were      
a man he would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then      
for his manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?...         
Well, and you?"                                                             
  "I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving         
along and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows           
where we are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive         
and suddenly find that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And        
then I thought... No, nothing else."                                        
                                                     {BK7|CH7 ^paragraph 75}
  "I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as          
Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.                                     
  "No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about         
Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would          
have liked "Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How      
well Anisya carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her             
spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. "And do you know," she                
suddenly said, "I know that I shall never again be as happy and             
tranquil as I am now."                                                      
  "Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought:          
"How charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her      
and never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive           
about together!                                                             
  "What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.               
  "Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!" she said,                
pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the         
moist velvety darkness of the night.                                        
                                                                            
BK7|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the             
Nobility because it involved him in too much expense, but still his         
affairs did not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their           
parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard               
suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near      
Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the             
count had been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in            
former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of      
people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were         
all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as            
members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live      
in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife,          
Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady,        
an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the         
girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it               
preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than          
at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits        
of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of          
existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting                   
establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty              
horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive                
presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days;             
there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at which-           
spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them- he let            
himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors,      
who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a      
most profitable source of income.                                           
  The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to            
believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every        
step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work          
carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her         
loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was         
not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was- that         
(though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the                   
consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, and she tried to          
find means of remedying the position. From her feminine point of            
view she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry         
a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope and that if             
Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she would have to         
abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with         
Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a girl      
the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy      
heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.                      
  The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow               
suggesting a marriage between their children and had received a             
favorable answer from her. Karagina had replied that for her part           
she was agreeable, and everything depend on her daughter's                  
inclination. She invited Nicholas to come to Moscow.                        
  Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son          
that now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him      
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that        
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid            
girl and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.                  
  At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to          
Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his      
mother's remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations      
induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of      
getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie            
Karagina.                                                                   
                                                      {BK7|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  "But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you         
expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of             
money?" he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question      
and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.                              
  "No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how        
to justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your      
happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an           
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.                       
  "Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I          
will give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I         
would sacrifice anything for you- even my feelings."                        
  But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did         
not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a             
sacrifice for him.                                                          
  "No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she         
replied, wiping away her tears.                                             
                                                     {BK7|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to         
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could      
speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he              
thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should      
certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can         
always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to           
himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that             
feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else."                       
  Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the         
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and              
sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment               
between her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself        
for it, she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya,         
often pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my          
dear," and using the formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in         
speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with           
Sonya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind,      
so devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully,                
unchangingly, and unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were        
no grounds for finding fault with her.                                      
  Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter      
had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he           
would have been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound        
unexpectedly reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to             
defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still      
as much in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that          
love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures        
of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their              
separation she began to have fits of depression which she could not         
master. She felt sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted         
all this time and of no use to anyone- while she felt herself so            
capable of loving and being loved.                                          
  Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.                            
                                                                            
BK7|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and         
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and        
the new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities,         
though the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine      
by day, and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some      
special celebration of the season.                                          
  On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the      
inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest         
time of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that        
morning, was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was             
resting in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round            
table, copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing            
patience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the          
window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to          
Sonya, glanced at what she was doing, and then went up to her mother        
and stood without speaking.                                                 
  "Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother.          
"What do you want?"                                                         
  "Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha,        
with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.                                
  The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.      
                                                      {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                                                   
                                                     {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  "Stop playing- there's a time for everything," said the old woman.        
  "Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."          
  Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went      
to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing      
cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.                              
  "What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.                               
  "Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the         
yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some        
oats."                                                                      
                                                     {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  "Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily.                    
  "Go, go quickly," the old man urged him.                                  
  "And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk."                             
  On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a                
samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.                         
  Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.          
Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order           
and asked whether the samovar was really wanted.                            
                                                     {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  "Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at           
Natasha.                                                                    
  No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble        
as Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to          
send them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of            
them would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no          
one's orders so readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can         
I go?" thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.                   
  "Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked        
the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.                 
  "Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.               
  "O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am      
I to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly           
upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.            
                                                     {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 25}
  Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which         
were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were          
discussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha      
sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air,         
and then got up again.                                                      
  "The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated,      
articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame          
Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.         
  Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on         
him he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.                       
  "Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."                 
  Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her      
arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.                         
                                                     {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 30}
  "No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off        
his back she went downstairs.                                               
  Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made        
sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was             
dull, Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar,         
sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her           
fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she             
recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew.      
What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other           
listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences           
arose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes          
fixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door and                
listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on         
the past.                                                                   
  Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced      
at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her            
that she remembered the light failing through that crack once before        
and Sonya passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the         
same," thought Natasha.                                                     
  "Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.                
  "Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and           
listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of          
being wrong.                                                                
                                                     {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 35}
  "There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling      
timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in            
just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."            
  "No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! " and Natasha        
sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where            
were you going?" she asked.                                                 
  "To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."      
  "You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And        
where's Nicholas?"                                                          
  "Asleep, I think."                                                        
                                                     {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 40}
  "Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come      
and sing."                                                                  
  She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened      
before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all                
regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time        
when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.        
  "Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!      
And, worst of all, I am growing old- that's the thing! There won't          
then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will         
come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing         
room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose,         
put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.                          
  All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were            
already at the tea table. The servants stood round the table- but           
Prince Andrew was not there and life was going on as before.                
  "Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter.         
"Well, sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced        
round as if looking for something.                                          
                                                     {BK7|CH9 ^paragraph 45}
  "Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,         
quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.              
  She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between        
the elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my        
God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing        
in the same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of           
repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they            
were always the same.                                                       
  After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to      
their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.         
                                                                            
BK7|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when            
they settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you          
to feel as if there were nothing more to come- nothing; that                
everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?"            
  "I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when              
everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has         
come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must      
all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where      
there was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..."                     
  "Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I        
was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I         
was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat         
sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and          
sorry for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was                 
innocent- that was the chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?"       
  "I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you           
afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt               
ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and            
wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?"                                 
  "And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how           
once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us            
into the study- that was in the old house- and it was dark- we went in      
and suddenly there stood..."                                                
                                                     {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  "A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course         
I remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or      
if we only dreamed it or were told about him."                              
  "He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and            
looked at us..."                                                            
  "Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas.                                 
  "Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.          
  "You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said             
Natasha, "and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you          
remember!"                                                                  
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                               
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they          
shared the same reminiscences.                                              
  Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she         
recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced.        
She simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.              
  She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first                
arrival. She told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because          
he had on a corded jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too,         
would be sewn up with cords.                                                
  "And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a           
cabbage," said Natasha, and I remember that I dared not disbelieve          
it then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable."       
  While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other            
door of the sitting room.                                                   
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  "They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper.                
  "It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied              
Natasha.                                                                    
  In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and      
went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its           
cloth covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.                      
  "Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the        
old countess' voice from the drawing room.                                  
  Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya,      
remarked: "How quiet you young people are!"                                 
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  "Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a           
moment and then continuing the conversation. They were now                  
discussing dreams.                                                          
  Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the          
table, took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself      
quietly in her former place. It was dark in the room especially             
where they were sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the        
silvery light of the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished      
the piece but still sat softly running his fingers over the strings,        
evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.              
  "Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to                
Nicholas and Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling                 
memories, one at last begins to remember what happened before one           
was in the world..."                                                        
  "That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well,        
and remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have      
lived in animals, and will go back into animals again."                     
  "No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still        
in a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we         
were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we         
remember...."                                                               
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 30}
  "May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat        
down by them.                                                               
  "If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas.        
"No, that can't be!"                                                        
  "Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was           
before?" Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal- well      
then, if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a          
whole eternity."                                                            
  "Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked                
Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending          
smile but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they.                       
  "Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now            
today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday,        
and the day before..."                                                      
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 35}
  "Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the          
countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"                
  "Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same        
she rose.                                                                   
  None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break           
off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but        
Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as         
usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the            
resonance was best, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.       
  She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had      
sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The          
count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her            
and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in           
his talk while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped,           
while Mitenka stood in front of him also listening and smiling.             
Nicholas did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath in            
time with her. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the immense               
difference there was between herself and her friend, and how                
impossible it was for her to be anything like as bewitching as her          
cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and with         
tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of            
Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural      
and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince Andrew.       
  Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with        
closed eyes.                                                                
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 40}
  "Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she           
has nothing to learn- what softness, tenderness, and strength...."          
  "Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess,        
not realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her      
that Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she        
would not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing,                    
fourteen-year-old Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some             
mummers had arrived.                                                        
  Natasha stopped abruptly.                                                 
  "Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair,             
threw herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop           
for a long time.                                                            
  "It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled            
me," she said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs         
still choked her.                                                           
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 45}
  The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,         
innkeepers, and ladies- frightening and funny- bringing in with them        
the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first            
timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed      
into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily      
and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas          
games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their      
costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,        
smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had          
disappeared.                                                                
  Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the          
ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt- this was Nicholas. A Turkish        
girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a           
Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.                 
  After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from        
those who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided          
that their costumes were so good that they ought to be shown                
elsewhere.                                                                  
  Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to         
take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them         
about a dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."                   
  "No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you        
wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the           
Melyukovs'"                                                                 
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 50}
  Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and          
governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.                            
  "That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly              
aroused. "I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette        
open her eyes."                                                             
  But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad           
leg all these last days. It was decided that the count must not go,         
but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the         
young ladies might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and      
shy, more urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.       
  Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows            
were extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very            
handsome, and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with         
her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be          
decided, and in her male attire she seemed quite a different person.        
Louisa Ivanovna consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka            
sleighs with large and small bells, their runners squeaking and             
whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to the porch.                      
  Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing      
from one to another, grew stronger and stronger and reached its climax      
when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs,             
talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting.                    
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 55}
  Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was        
the old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse, the      
fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.             
Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his              
hussar overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.          
  It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the        
metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked             
round in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.       
  Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas'           
sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the         
rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.             
  "You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman,        
wishing for a chance to race past him.                                      
  The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,      
squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its                
deep-toned bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts      
of the middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered          
like sugar, and threw it up.                                                
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 60}
  Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the              
others moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove          
at a steady trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the           
garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and         
hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the              
fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out        
before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish                
shadows. Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the        
snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same          
way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas             
began to speed along the road, one after the other.                         
  "A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice               
through the frost-bound air.                                                
  "How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.                          
  Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face            
closer. Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches           
peeped up at him from her sable furs- so close and yet so distant-          
in the moonlight.                                                           
  "That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and         
smiled.                                                                     
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 65}
  "What is it, Nicholas?"                                                   
  "Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses.                        
  When they came out onto the beaten highroad- polished by sleigh           
runners and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were             
visible in the moonlight- the horses began to tug at the reins of           
their own accord and increased their pace. The near side horse,             
arching his head and breaking into a short canter, tugged at his            
traces. The shaft horse swayed from side to side, moving his ears as        
if asking: "Isn't it time to begin now?" In front, already far ahead        
the deep bell of the sleigh ringing farther and farther off, the black      
horses driven by Zakhar could be clearly seen against the white             
snow. From that sleigh one could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices      
of the mummers.                                                             
  "Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one         
side and flourishing the whip.                                              
  It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given          
by the side horses who pulled harder- ever increasing their gallop-         
that one noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back.      
With screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft        
horses to gallop- the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung         
steadily beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of                  
slackening pace and ready to put on speed when required.                    
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 70}
  Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and        
coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.        
  "Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But        
no- this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy      
meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is         
something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting      
to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.                           
  Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already        
covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.                                     
  Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his         
arms, clucked his tongue and let his horses go.                             
  "Now, look out, master!" he cried.                                        
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 75}
  Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the      
feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead.            
Zakhar, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with         
the reins.                                                                  
  "No you won't, master!" he shouted.                                       
  Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The            
horses showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh-      
beside them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused            
glimpses of swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they          
were passing. The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the        
voices of girls shrieking were heard from different sides.                  
  Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were          
still surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled        
with stars.                                                                 
  "Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the        
left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this         
Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows          
what is happening to us- but it is very strange and pleasant                
whatever it is." And he looked round in the sleigh.                         
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 80}
  "Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the         
strange, pretty, unfamiliar people- the one with fine eyebrows and          
mustache.                                                                   
  "I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was        
Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the           
mustache I don't know, but I love her."                                     
  "Aren't you cold?" he asked.                                              
  They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh           
behind shouted something- probably something funny- but they could not      
make out what he said.                                                      
  "Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing.                               
                                                    {BK7|CH10 ^paragraph 85}
  "But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a             
glitter of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver             
roofs of fairy buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And          
if this is really Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove            
heaven knows where and have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas.          
  It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces          
came running, out to the porch carrying candles.                            
  "Who is it?" asked someone in the porch.                                  
  "The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some        
voices.                                                                     
                                                                            
BK7|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman            
wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress,               
surrounded by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling        
dull. They were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at        
the shadows the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard        
the steps and voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.                      
  Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their         
throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,         
came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The            
clown- Dimmler- and the lady- Nicholas- started a dance. Surrounded by      
the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and                
disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged                
themselves about the room.                                                  
  "Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she          
looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler- isn't      
he good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a           
Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that?      
Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya- clear away the tables!      
And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar!      
Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different         
voices were saying.                                                         
  Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into        
the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male             
garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish      
arms from behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young                 
Melyukovs joined the mummers.                                               
  Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the        
visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,      
went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles,               
peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to             
recognize any of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she        
failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters,          
or her late husband's, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put      
on.                                                                         
                                                     {BK7|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  "And who is is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face      
of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one      
of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve            
in?" she asked Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she      
ordered the butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden      
by his law."                                                                
  Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by         
the dancers, who- having decided once for all that being disguised, no      
one would recognize them- were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna           
hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook            
with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.                               
  "My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.                               
  After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna        
made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a               
string, and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games           
together.                                                                   
  In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The            
corked eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring,             
flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the         
mummers, admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly        
how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for              
having entertained her so well. The visitors were invited to supper in      
the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to them in the         
ballroom.                                                                   
                                                    {BK7|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  "Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!"        
said an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.               
  "Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.                                     
  "You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."                                    
  "I'll go," said Sonya.                                                    
  "Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov          
girl.                                                                       
                                                    {BK7|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  "Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a           
cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After             
sitting a while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh              
drives up with harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in,            
just in the shape of a man, like an officer- comes in and sits down to      
table with her."                                                            
  "Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.                 
  "Yes? And how... did he speak?"                                           
  "Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began                
persuading her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow,         
but she got frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her         
hands. Then he caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just            
then..."                                                                    
  "Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.                        
                                                    {BK7|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  "Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter.         
  "And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.                       
  "Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on          
what you hear; hammering and knocking- that's bad; but a sound of           
shifting grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too."                  
  "Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."                        
  Pelageya Danilovna smiled.                                                
                                                    {BK7|CH11 ^paragraph 25}
  "Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?"          
  "Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya.           
  "Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"                                    
  "Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.                                    
  Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game      
or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at        
her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today,           
thanks to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to            
know her. And really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated,      
and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen her before.                        
                                                    {BK7|CH11 ^paragraph 30}
  "So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought         
gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous      
smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.                 
  "I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She         
got up.                                                                     
  They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and             
listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her            
head and shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.                                 
  "What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been          
thinking of till now?"                                                      
  Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went          
hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of            
people really had made the house stuffy.                                    
                                                    {BK7|CH11 ^paragraph 35}
  Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but         
even brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow             
sparkled with so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the         
sky and the real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary,        
while the earth was gay.                                                    
  "I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought              
Nicholas. and running out from the porch he went round the corner of        
the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya      
would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood        
and across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old            
lime trees fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the           
barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked      
as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A         
tree in the garden snapped with the frost, and then all was again           
perfectly silent. His bosom seemed to inhale not air but the                
strength of eternal youth and gladness.                                     
  From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the      
bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he          
heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight,          
along the path, Miss. Only, don't look back."                               
  "I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward      
Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her         
thin shoes.                                                                 
  Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of          
paces away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas         
she had known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress,        
with tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly           
toward him.                                                                 
                                                    {BK7|CH11 ^paragraph 40}
  "Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her      
face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the             
cloak that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and          
kissed her on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt        
cork. Sonya kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little         
hands pressed them to his cheeks.                                           
  "Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and      
then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back           
porch.                                                                      
                                                                            
BK7|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who          
always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss      
should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and      
the maids.                                                                  
  On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing         
and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's      
face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former         
and his present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted          
again. He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new            
Sonya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the                 
sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast            
and, looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling          
sky, felt himself again in fairyland.                                       
  "Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time.                
  "Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?"                                      
  When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and           
ran for a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing.                 
                                                     {BK7|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  "Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my         
mind about Sonya?"                                                          
  "Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with        
joy.                                                                        
  "Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...        
Natasha- are you glad?"                                                     
  "I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I           
did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart        
she has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be           
happy while Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad!           
Well, run back to her."                                                     
  "No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering      
into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual,         
and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before.                 
"Natasha, it's magical, isn't it?"                                          
                                                    {BK7|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  "Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly."                           
  "Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should        
long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me,      
and all would have been well."                                              
  "So you are glad and I have done right?"                                  
  "Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.      
Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing!         
I nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of      
Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her."                               
  "Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the              
expression of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then          
he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his          
sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and               
beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting          
there, and that Circassian was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his      
future happy and loving wife.                                               
                                                    {BK7|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
  When they reached home and had told their mother how they had             
spent the evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their                
bedroom. When they had undressed, but without washing off the cork          
mustaches, they sat a long time talking of their happiness. They            
talked of how they would live when they were married, how their             
husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be. On Natasha's        
table stood two looking glasses which Dunyasha had prepared                 
beforehand.                                                                 
  "Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too        
good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses.               
  "Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya.                  
  Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking           
glasses, and sat down.                                                      
  "I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face.       
                                                    {BK7|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha.                                 
  With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held          
into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious      
expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the           
receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting             
(from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew,          
in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was        
to take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin,           
she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the         
looking glasses.                                                            
  "Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down        
now, Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I          
feel so frightened!"                                                        
  Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began      
looking.                                                                    
  "Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha;           
"while you do nothing but laugh."                                           
                                                    {BK7|CH12 ^paragraph 25}
  Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper:                                   
  "I know she will. She saw something last year."                           
  For about three minutes all were silent.                                  
  "Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish...            
suddenly Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her        
eyes with her hand.                                                         
  "Oh, Natasha!" she cried.                                                 
                                                    {BK7|CH12 ^paragraph 30}
  "Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up        
the looking glass.                                                          
  Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to         
get up when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not        
wish to disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to           
sit still. She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped      
her when she covered her eyes.                                              
  "You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand.                           
  "Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying,           
not yet knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.       
  "But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who      
can tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind.      
                                                    {BK7|CH12 ^paragraph 35}
  "Yes, I saw him," she said.                                               
  "How? Standing or lying?"                                                 
  "No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying            
down."                                                                      
  "Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes             
fixed on her friend.                                                        
  "No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he      
turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really      
seen what she described.                                                    
                                                    {BK7|CH12 ^paragraph 40}
  "Well, and then, Sonya?..."                                               
  "After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and      
red..."                                                                     
  "Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how         
afraid I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha        
began, and without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into        
bed, and long after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless,        
gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.                     
                                                                            
BK7|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his         
love for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who      
had long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this      
declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that          
he might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father         
would give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the             
first time, felt that his mother was displeased with him and that,          
despite her love for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without           
looking at her son, she sent for her husband and, when he came,             
tried briefly and coldly to inform him of the facts, in her son's           
presence, but unable to restrain herself she burst into tears of            
vexation and left the room. The old count began irresolutely to             
admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his purpose. Nicholas replied      
that he could not go back on his word, and his father, sighing and          
evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to the          
countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count was always          
conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the family          
fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to marry        
an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he           
was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had         
not been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could          
have been wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mitenka and      
his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the              
family finances.                                                            
  The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son            
again, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a         
cruelty neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to        
catch Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with            
downcast eyes to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what      
was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her          
benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this         
case she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She        
could not help loving the countess and the whole Rostov family, but         
neither could she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his                 
happiness depended on that love. She was silent and sad and did not         
reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and went to            
have an explanation with his mother. He first implored her to               
forgive him and Sonya and consent to their marriage, then he                
threatened that if she molested Sonya he would at once marry her            
secretly.                                                                   
  The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her               
before, replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying         
without his father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she        
would never receive that intriguer as her daughter.                         
  Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told        
his mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his        
feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time....           
But he had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression          
of his face caused his mother to await with terror, and which would         
perhaps have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had           
not time to say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the      
room from the door at which she had been listening.                         
  "Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I      
tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.                
                                                     {BK7|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  "Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she        
said to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a      
rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and              
excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.                
  "Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling,"          
said Natasha.                                                               
  Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which         
she was aiming.                                                             
  The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's             
breast, while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.         
  Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded      
that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not      
be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything        
without his parents' knowledge.                                             
                                                    {BK7|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment,      
to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,      
sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,      
passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his        
regiment.                                                                   
  After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more          
depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.      
  Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more          
so on account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting      
toward her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of      
his affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house        
and estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they         
had to go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay         
their departure from day to day.                                            
  Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her            
betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and           
impatient every day. The thought that her best days, which she would        
have employed in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no              
advantage to anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the         
most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived          
only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new           
places and new people that interested him. The more interesting his         
letters were the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from          
giving her any comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial            
obligation. She could not write, because she could not conceive the         
possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part      
of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him         
formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no               
importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess           
corrected her mistakes in spelling.                                         
  There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was        
impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's             
trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince            
Andrew was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending      
the winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.                   
                                                    {BK7|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya      
and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.                 
                                                                            
BK8                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                             BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12                          
                                                                            
BK8|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any            
apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as               
before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by         
his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner            
man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor- all the zest          
of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and      
the death of Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost        
at the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a          
brilliant wife who now enjoyed the favors of a very important               
personage, acquaintance with all Petersburg, and his court service          
with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre          
unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary, avoided the company      
of the Brothers, began going to the Club again, drank a great deal,         
and came once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a          
life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak severely        
to him about it. Pierre felt that she right, and to avoid compromising      
her went away to Moscow.                                                    
  In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded         
and fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as            
soon as, driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with           
innumerable tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons,           
the Kremlin Square with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh        
drivers and hovels of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who         
desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days                
leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls,           
and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In          
Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing      
gown.                                                                       
  Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received         
Pierre like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready              
awaiting him. For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest,            
most intellectual, merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a              
heedless, genial nobleman of the old Russian type. His purse was            
always empty because it was open to everyone.                               
  Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent                  
societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees,             
Freemasons, churches, and books- no one and nothing met with a refusal      
from him, and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large        
sums from him and taken him under their protection, he would have           
given everything away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the            
Club without him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa             
after two bottles of Margaux he was surrounded, and talking,                
disputing, and joking began. When there were quarrels, his kindly           
smile and well-timed jests reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic          
dinners were dull and dreary when he was not there.                         
  When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly          
smile, yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive           
off somewhere with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the      
young men. At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies,        
married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of      
them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il           
est charmant; il n'a pas de sexe,"* they said of him.                       
                                                      {BK8|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  *"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?                                                                  
                                                     {BK8|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  But instead of all that- here he was, the wealthy husband of an           
unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and         
drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the                
government a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal      
favorite in Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile          
himself to the idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow            
gentlemen-in-waiting he had so despised seven years before.                 
  Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only           
living this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought        
of how many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club              
temporarily, with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it            
when not a single tooth or hair remained.                                   
  In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to         
him that he was quite different and distinct from those other               
retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were            
empty, stupid, contented fellows, satisfied with their position,            
"while I am still discontented and want to do something for mankind.        
But perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me and           
sought something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were         
brought by force of circumstances, society, and race- by that               
elemental force against which man is powerless- to the condition I          
am in," said he to himself in moments of humility; and after living         
some time in Moscow he no longer despised, but began to grow fond           
of, to respect, and to pity his comrades in destiny, as he pitied           
himself.                                                                    
  Pierre longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust      
with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such        
acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment.           
"What for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself        
in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to               
reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by        
experience that there were no answers to these questions he made haste      
to turn away from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the            
Club or to Apollon Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town.       
  "Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is         
one of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded      
by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay          
homage to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he         
was great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the               
Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal               
marriage. The Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy, offer praise          
to God for their victory over the French on the fourteenth of June,         
and the French, also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because      
on that same fourteenth of June they defeated the Spaniards. My             
brother Masons swear by the blood that they are ready to sacrifice          
everything for their neighbor, but they do not give a ruble each to         
the collections for the poor, and they intrigue, the Astraea Lodge          
against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an authentic Scotch carpet        
and a charter that nobody needs, and the meaning of which the very man      
who wrote it does not understand. We all profess the Christian law          
of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors, the law in honor      
of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty churches- but            
yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister of that            
same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a cross        
to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of          
this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to      
it, astonished him each time as if it were something new. "I                
understand the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I          
to tell them all that I see? I have tried, and have always found            
that they too in the depths of their souls understand it as I do,           
and only try not to see it. So it appears that it must be so! But I-        
what is to become of me?" thought he. He had the unfortunate                
capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing        
in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and        
falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it.      
Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and              
deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil        
and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity.        
Yet he had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be        
under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned               
himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He frequented           
every kind of society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in              
building, and above all- read.                                              
                                                     {BK8|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  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!"                                                          
                                                                            
BK8|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his              
daughter moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor           
Alexander's regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French             
tendency prevailed there, and this, together with his past and his          
intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas                 
Bolkonski an object of particular respect to the Moscovites and the         
center of the Moscow opposition to the government.                          
  The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of        
senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent        
events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which      
he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of          
this the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of            
respectful veneration- especially of an evening when he came in to tea      
in his old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone,          
told his abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and         
scathing criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned        
house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered         
footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past          
century) with his gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who            
were reverently devoted to him presented a majestic and agreeable           
spectacle. But the visitors did not reflect that besides the couple of      
hours during which they saw their host, there were also twenty-two          
hours in the day during which the private and intimate life of the          
house continued.                                                            
  Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.      
There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures- talks with      
the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills- and        
she had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not      
go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her        
go anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going         
out himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening             
parties. She had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She           
saw the coldness and malevolence with which the old prince received         
and dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes                
appeared at their house. She had no friends: during this visit to           
Moscow she had been disappointed in the two who had been nearest to         
her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never been able to be        
quite frank, had now become unpleasant to her, and for various reasons      
Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom she had corresponded for        
the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to         
her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers        
had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was in the full          
whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young men who, she        
fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth. Julie was at         
that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels that her last      
chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be decided now or        
never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a mournful smile          
that she now had no one to write to, since Julie- whose presence            
gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the old         
emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his            
evenings for years, she regretted Julie's presence and having no one        
to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one          
to whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just         
then. The time for Prince Andrew's return and marriage was                  
approaching, but his request to her to prepare his father for it had        
not been carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite           
hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess Rostova the old        
prince (who apart from that was usually in a bad temper) lost               
control of himself. Another lately added sorrow arose from the lessons      
she gave her six year-old nephew. To her consternation she detected in      
herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her father's        
irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get          
irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in      
hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to        
pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child- who was           
already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry- that at           
his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated,        
raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in        
the corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to         
cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas, following her         
example, would sob, and without permission would leave his corner,          
come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort her. But         
what distressed the princess most of all was her father's                   
irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late         
amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the          
ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water,        
it would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but        
this loving despot- the more cruel because he loved her and for that        
reason tormented himself and her- knew how not merely to hurt and           
humiliate her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to          
blame for everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that             
tormented Princess Mary more than anything else; this was his               
ever-increasing intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at      
the first moment of receiving the news of his son's intentions had          
occurred to him in jest- that if Andrew got married he himself would        
marry Bourienne- had evidently pleased him, and latterly he had             
persistently, and as it seemed to Princess Mary merely to offend            
her, shown special endearments to the companion and expressed his           
dissatisfaction with his daughter by demonstrations of love of              
Bourienne.                                                                  
  One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her            
father did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed           
Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her         
affectionately. Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few        
minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room         
smiling and making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess        
Mary hastily wiped away her tears, went resolutely up to                    
Mademoiselle Bourienne, and evidently unconscious of what she was           
doing began shouting in angry haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice           
breaking: "It's horrible, vile, inhuman, to take advantage of the           
weakness..." She did not finish. "Leave my room," she exclaimed, and        
burst into sobs.                                                            
  Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she           
noticed that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne           
should be served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee        
and from habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew            
furious, threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to      
have him conscripted for the army.                                          
                                                      {BK8|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                                
                                                                            
BK8|CH3                                                                     
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor- Metivier- who         
had rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome,           
amiable as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an                   
extraordinarily clever doctor. He was received in the best houses           
not merely as a doctor, but as an equal.                                    
  Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on            
Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him        
and had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about      
twice a week.                                                               
  On December 6- St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day- all           
Moscow came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit          
no one and to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom          
he gave to Princess Mary.                                                   
  Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered      
it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne,* as he            
told Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on      
that morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods.      
He had been going about the house all the morning finding fault with        
everyone and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not      
to be understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet        
absorbed querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage,      
and she went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and           
loaded gun and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's         
arrival the morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor,      
Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing room near the door        
through which she could hear all that passed in the study.                  
-                                                                           
                                                      {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  *To force the guard.                                                      
-                                                                           
  At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then         
both voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung             
open, and on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the              
terrified Metivier with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his      
dressing gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils          
of his eyes rolled downwards.                                               
  "You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy,        
slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..."       
  Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne      
who at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.             
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  "The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head.         
Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his      
fingers to his lips he hastened away.                                       
  Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:      
"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my           
own house!"                                                                 
  After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in,         
and the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a      
spy had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a         
list, and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was        
that scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he          
said, he could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly.         
  "No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that,                  
understand it! I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the             
room. Then, as if afraid she might find some means of consolation,          
he returned and trying to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have      
said this in a moment of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and      
it will be carried out- we must part; so find some place for                
yourself...." But he could not restrain himself and with the virulence      
of which only one who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself,        
he shook his fists at her and screamed:                                     
  "If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door,            
sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.               
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.                
  These guests- the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with           
his nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of      
the younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy- awaited the prince      
in the drawing room.                                                        
  Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been        
anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had               
contrived to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his          
case made an exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his        
house.                                                                      
  The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable         
society, but his little circle- though not much talked about in             
town- was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other.      
Boris had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in      
his presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and         
Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:                              
  "On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince      
Nicholas Bolkonski."                                                        
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  "Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander in chief. "How is he?..."           
  The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty                 
old-fashioned drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn      
gathering of a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low           
tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary          
seemed even quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were          
reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood for their         
conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going,           
now relating the latest town news, and now the latest political             
gossip.                                                                     
  Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the                
conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge                
receives a report, only now and then, silently or by a brief word,          
showing that he took heed of what was being reported to him. The            
tone of the conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of      
what was being done in the political world. Incidents were related          
evidently confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to      
worse, but whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker         
always stopped, or was stopped, at the point beyond which his               
criticism might touch the sovereign himself.                                
  At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's        
seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note,         
hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.        
  "Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said        
Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times           
before. "One only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the         
crowned heads. Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't           
scruple to depose the head of the Catholic Church- yet all keep             
silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the        
Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and even..." Count Rostopchin paused,        
feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was              
impossible.                                                                 
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 25}
  "Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of         
Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I          
might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan             
estates."                                                                   
  "The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength      
of character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in                   
respectfully.                                                               
  He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the        
honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at           
the young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his        
mind, evidently considering him too young.                                  
  "I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was              
surprised how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in      
the casual tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.      
  Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not                  
understanding why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the      
Note.                                                                       
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 30}
  "Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so            
long as its substance is forcible?"                                         
  "My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should          
be easy to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin.                   
  Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording        
of the Note.                                                                
  "One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up,"              
remarked the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing-      
not notes only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a             
whole volume of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!"         
and he laughed unnaturally.                                                 
  There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general          
cleared his throat to draw attention.                                       
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 35}
  "Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The          
figure cut by the new French ambassador."                                   
  "Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His             
Majesty's presence."                                                        
  "His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the          
march past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador            
took no notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no      
attention to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply.        
At the next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to             
address him."                                                               
  All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it      
was impossible to pass any judgment.                                        
  "Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned         
him out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him spite      
of my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing         
angrily at his daughter.                                                    
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 40}
  And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and         
the reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these        
reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.      
  After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to                 
congratulate the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.         
  He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled,              
clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told           
her that he had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision         
remained in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his           
speaking of it to her now.                                                  
  When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the         
old men sat together.                                                       
  Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the         
impending war.                                                              
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 45}
  He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long          
as we sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into           
European affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit.      
"We ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political         
interests are all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only          
thing is to have an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will           
never dare to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!"         
  "How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can        
we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our           
youths, look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our           
Kingdom of Heaven."                                                         
  He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.              
  "French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you            
turned Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a               
Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their          
knees. I went to a party last night, and there out of five ladies           
three were Roman Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing          
woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked,            
like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when           
one looks at our young people, Prince, one would like to take Peter         
the Great's old cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the            
Russian way till all the nonsense jumps out of them."                       
  All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile         
and wagged his head approvingly.                                            
                                                     {BK8|CH3 ^paragraph 50}
  "Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin,             
getting up with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to        
the prince.                                                                 
  "Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of         
hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and             
offering his cheek to be kissed.                                            
  Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose.                      
                                                                            
BK8|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and              
faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only                
wondered whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile           
attitude toward her. She did not even notice the special attentions         
and amiabilities shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who           
was visiting them for the third time already.                               
  Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to               
Pierre, who hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of        
the guests to approach her after the old prince had gone out and            
they were left alone in the drawing room.                                   
  "May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink        
into an armchair beside her.                                                
  "Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked.            
  Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight          
before him and smiled quietly.                                              
                                                      {BK8|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  "Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked.                 
  "Who?"                                                                    
  "Drubetskoy."                                                             
  "No, not long..."                                                         
  "Do you like him?"                                                        
                                                     {BK8|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  "Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said      
Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with           
her father.                                                                 
  "Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from         
Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an           
heiress."                                                                   
  "You have observed that?" said Princess Mary.                             
  "Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages      
matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I         
can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay           
siege to- you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive          
to her."                                                                    
  "He visits them?"                                                         
                                                     {BK8|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said          
Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good        
humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his            
diary.                                                                      
  "No," replied Princess Mary.                                              
  "To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is          
very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre.                   
  "Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and      
still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she,      
"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should            
like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would        
be a relief. He would give me advice."                                      
  "Would you marry him?"                                                    
                                                     {BK8|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                       
                                                     {BK8|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  "Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the              
subject. "I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting              
Andrew any day. I should like them to meet here."                           
  "And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring          
to the old prince.                                                          
  Princess Mary shook her head.                                             
  "What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The             
thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first         
moments. I wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her.      
You have known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me              
honestly the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you         
think of her?- The real truth, because you know Andrew is risking so        
much doing this against his father's will that I should like to             
know..."                                                                    
  An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and            
repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on         
the princess' part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that          
he should disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what          
he felt rather than what he thought.                                        
                                                     {BK8|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  "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."               
                                                     {BK8|CH4 ^paragraph 35}
  Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.                        
  "Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do."      
  "I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre.                        
  Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her         
future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to           
accustom the old prince to her.                                             
                                                                            
BK8|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg,          
so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered         
between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though          
Princess Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than      
Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to          
her. When they had last met on the old prince's name day, she had           
answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently        
not listening to what he was saying.                                        
  Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a        
manner peculiar to herself.                                                 
  She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become      
very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself           
not merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She      
was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a            
very wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew           
the less dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could        
associate with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and        
the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring         
any obligation. A man who would have been afraid ten years before of        
going every day to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there,      
for fear of compromising her and committing himself, would now go           
boldly every day and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a          
sexless acquaintance.                                                       
  That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and                
hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner          
parties, a large company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day,         
supping at midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never      
missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of           
the latest fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be                   
disillusioned about everything and told everyone that she did not           
believe either in friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life,        
and expected peace only "yonder." She adopted the tone of one who           
has suffered a great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost        
the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of        
the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had        
even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life.            
This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not         
hinder the young people who came to her house from passing the time         
pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to         
the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused himself with            
society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts rimes, which         
were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young men, among        
them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and with           
these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of           
all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with           
mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.                                      
  To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early        
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of                  
friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and        
showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote:      
"Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."       
                                                      {BK8|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  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.*                  
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK8|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  *Death gives relief and death is peaceful.                                
   Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.                             
-                                                                           
Julia said this was charming                                                
  "There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she        
said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a      
book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness        
and despair, showing the possibility of consolation."                       
  In reply Boris wrote these lines:                                         
                                                     {BK8|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
      Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,                            
      Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,                        
      Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,                            
      Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,                     
                                                     {BK8|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
      Et mele une douceur secrete                                           
      A ces pleurs que je sens couler.*                                     
-                                                                           
  *Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,                           
   Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,                 
                                                     {BK8|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
   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.                              
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK8|CH5 ^paragraph 30}
  For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris         
read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the             
reading because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large           
gatherings Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who      
understood one another in a world of indifferent people.                    
  Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing           
cards with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry            
(she was to have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests).          
Anna Mikhaylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her son to        
the wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.         
  "You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to      
the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He           
has suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to      
the mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of         
Julie latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving            
her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"- she paused. "And how      
I pity her mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and      
letters from Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor        
thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!"                   
  Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother.          
He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had      
to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and          
Nizhegorod estates.                                                         
  Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy              
adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of               
repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her        
artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility        
of real love still restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He             
spent every day and whole days at the Karagins', and every day on           
thinking the matter over told himself that he would propose                 
tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking at her red face and chin         
(nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and her expression of             
continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an unnatural         
rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive words,         
though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of      
those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned the use of           
the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and sometimes the        
thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but her              
feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and      
she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy,            
however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris'          
departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Boris' leave        
of absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in             
Moscow, and of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and Julie,             
suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive      
to Kuragin.                                                                 
                                                     {BK8|CH5 ^paragraph 35}
  "My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable      
source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him             
married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for          
her. What do you think of it, my dear?"                                     
  The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that           
whole month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing           
all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally        
apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another,           
and especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris.          
He drove to the Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing.             
Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had      
enjoyed yesterday's ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though             
Boris had come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore             
meant to be tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine                 
inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from sadness to joy, and how      
their moods depend solely on who happens to be paying court to them.        
Julie was offended and replied that it was true that a woman needs          
variety, and the same thing over and over again would weary anyone.         
  "Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but      
at that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have      
to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly        
wasted his efforts- which was a thing he never allowed to happen.           
  He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes        
to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and         
said:                                                                       
  "I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..."      
                                                     {BK8|CH5 ^paragraph 40}
  He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability      
had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were           
fixed on him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as           
not to see her often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and        
must be finished!" He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and           
said:                                                                       
  "You know my feelings for you!"                                           
  There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and        
self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on          
such occasions- that he loved her and had never loved any other             
woman more than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and                
Nizhegorod forests she could demand this, and she received what she         
demanded.                                                                   
  The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom         
and melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house      
in Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant          
wedding.                                                                    
                                                                            
BK8|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha        
and Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it        
was impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in      
Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near         
Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his      
future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in              
Moscow could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been          
heated that winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the      
countess was not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya            
Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality          
on them.                                                                    
  Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya               
Dmitrievna's courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya                  
Dmitrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter,           
and her sons were all in the service.                                       
  She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,         
loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach        
to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation- the possibility of      
which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing      
jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:      
on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on        
affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after         
dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there        
were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing         
meal at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she      
played a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a           
new book read to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception        
and went out to pay visits, and then only to the most important             
persons in the town.                                                        
  She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the              
pulley of the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the             
Rostovs and their servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles           
hanging down on her nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall         
doorway looking with a stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might      
have thought she was angry with the travelers and would immediately         
turn them out, had she not at the same time been giving careful             
instructions to the servants for the accommodation of the visitors and      
their belongings.                                                           
  "The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the          
portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the      
left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the      
samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked,         
drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by         
the hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she         
shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half           
frozen, I'm sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she      
added, turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her          
slightly contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.              
                                                      {BK8|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things           
and tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna              
kissed them all in due order.                                               
  "I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was          
high time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old           
man is here and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his         
aquaintance. But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at      
Sonya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her        
presence. "Now listen," she said to the count. "What do you want            
tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her         
fingers. "The sniveling Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here            
with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is          
here too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping        
after him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them"- and she             
pointed to the girls- "tomorrow I'll take them first to the Iberian         
shrine of the Mother of God, and then we'll drive to the                    
Super-Rogue's. I suppose you'll have everything new. Don't judge by         
me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irina      
Vasilevna came to see me; she was an awful sight- looked as if she had      
put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now without          
some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?" she asked           
the count sternly.                                                          
  "One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a         
purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If         
you will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just         
for a day, and leave my lassies with you."                                  
  "All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in             
Chancery! I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet      
them a bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and            
favorite, Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand.                        
  Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian        
shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so        
afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at         
a loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the        
whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the         
room except Nataisha, and then called her pet to her armchair.              
                                                     {BK8|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed.              
You've hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known         
him since he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the      
ground. Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now        
listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's           
marrying. The old fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a      
child and can shift without him, but it's not nice to enter a family        
against a father's will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly.        
You're a clever girl and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use        
your wits. Then all will be well."                                          
  Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but      
really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her          
love of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human          
affairs that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince          
Andrew, he loved her only, and was to come one of these days and            
take her. She wanted nothing more.                                          
  "You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your      
future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but            
this one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two             
together. Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice      
and affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll      
find you already know his sister and father and are liked by them.          
Am I right or not? Won't that be best?"                                     
  "Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly.                             
                                                                            
BK8|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to      
call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out                
cheerfully on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well                  
remembered the last interview he had had with the old prince at the         
time of the enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner he         
had had to listen to an angry reprimand for not having provided his         
full quota of men. Natasha, on the other hand, having put on her            
best gown, was in the highest spirits. "They can't help liking me,"         
she thought. "Everybody always has liked me, and I am so willing to do      
anything they wish, so ready to be fond of him- for being his               
father- and of her- for being his sister- that there is no reason           
for them not to like me..."                                                 
  They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and             
entered the vestibule.                                                      
  "Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest,          
half in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on        
entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the           
prince and princess were at home.                                           
  When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the      
servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by          
another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a         
maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning      
the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced      
to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the              
princess begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the      
visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and             
daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess'           
room. The princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in        
patches, ran in to meet the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly          
trying to appear cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess        
Mary did not like Natasha. She thought her too fashionably dressed,         
frivolously gay and vain. She did not at all realize that before            
having seen her future sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by      
involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by         
jealousy of her brother's love for her. Apart from this insuperable         
antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just then because on           
the Rostovs' being announced, the old prince had shouted that he did        
not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do so if she chose, but      
they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to receive             
them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in some        
freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit.                       
  "There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said           
the count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old           
prince might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one               
another... very sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few          
more commonplace remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my           
Natasha in your hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive        
round to see Anna Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square,           
and then I'll come back for her."                                           
                                                      {BK8|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told         
his daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk      
to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of        
encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention      
this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness and      
anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still           
angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold           
and defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of                
anybody. The princess told the count that she would be delighted,           
and only begged him to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he              
departed.                                                                   
  Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary- who            
wished to have a tete-a-tete with Natasha- Mademoiselle Bourienne           
remained in the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements        
and theaters. Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had               
noticed in the anteroom, by her father's nervousness, and by the            
unnatural manner of the princess who- she thought- was making a             
favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did           
not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected, and          
dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an      
offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still more. After five            
minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they heard the sound          
of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary looked                 
frightened.                                                                 
  The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing gown and a white      
nightcap, came in.                                                          
  "Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am      
not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not           
know, madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with      
a visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg        
you to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated,         
stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that            
Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at         
her father or at Natasha.                                                   
  Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.           
Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.                              
                                                     {BK8|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not          
know," muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from            
head to foot he went out.                                                   
  Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this        
apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition.             
Natasha and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the         
longer they did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater      
grew their antipathy to one another.                                        
  When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened      
to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who      
could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an      
hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin      
talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought             
Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary.           
She knew what she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been           
unable to say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and         
because, without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of        
the marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess         
Mary went up hurriedly to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with      
a deep sigh:                                                                
  "Wait, I must..."                                                         
  Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.                    
                                                     {BK8|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am         
glad my brother has found happiness...."                                    
  She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha           
noticed this and guessed its reason.                                        
  "I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now,"           
she said with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears      
choking her.                                                                
  "What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she      
was out of the room.                                                        
  They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day.           
She sat in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing.      
Sonya stood beside her, kissing her hair.                                   
                                                     {BK8|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  "Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you?      
It will all pass, Natasha."                                                 
  "But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..."                 
  "Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should         
you mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.                                             
  Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed      
her wet face against her.                                                   
  "I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha-        
"It's my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he               
come?..."                                                                   
                                                     {BK8|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew           
how the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how        
upset Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the        
count and the other guests.                                                 
                                                                            
BK8|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya               
Dmitrievna had taken a box.                                                 
  Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya                    
Dmitrievna's kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she      
came ready dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and               
looking in the large mirror there saw that she was pretty, very             
pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.         
  "O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but         
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply      
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those               
searching inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me,           
and then I would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes- how      
I see those eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister      
matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those          
eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not      
think of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for         
the present. I can't bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!"        
and she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry.            
"And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so          
long and so patiently?" thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came        
in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. "No, she's altogether               
different. I can't!"                                                        
  Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not        
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at         
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words        
of love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside      
her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps               
flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in          
love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into      
the line of carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the                
theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya,             
holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out helped      
by the footmen, and, passing among men and women who were entering and      
the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the          
first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already          
audible.                                                                    
  "Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.                                 
                                                      {BK8|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and      
opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the      
door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and      
shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered              
before their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of            
feminine envy at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the             
overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with        
Sonya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite.         
A sensation she had not experienced for a long time- that of                
hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and neck- suddenly                
affected her both agreeably and disagreeably and called up a whole          
crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that feeling.       
  The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count            
Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted           
general attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's            
engagement to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in         
the country ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who      
was making one of the best matches in Russia.                               
  Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the                
country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly      
pretty. She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and            
beauty, combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her         
black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her              
delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the        
box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in      
time to the music, crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina,"          
said Sonya, "with her mother, isn't it?"                                    
  "Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked           
the count.                                                                  
  "Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna- what a headdress she has on!"              
                                                     {BK8|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "The Karagins, Julie- and Boris with them. One can see at once            
that they're engaged...."                                                   
  "Drubetskoy has proposed?"                                                
  "Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the                
Rostovs' box.                                                               
  Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were           
turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on         
her face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck- which             
Natasha knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and      
leaning over with an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome              
smoothly brushed head. He looked the Rostovs from under his brows           
and said something, smiling, to his betrothed.                              
  "They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And      
he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble             
themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of        
them."                                                                      
                                                     {BK8|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and            
with a happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their      
box was pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which            
Natasha knew so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly        
remembered all that had been so humiliating in her morning's visit.         
  "What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,         
better not think of it- not till he comes back!" she told herself, and      
began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the          
stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against the          
orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair           
brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,        
well aware that he was attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at      
ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's        
most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.                      
  The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her         
former adorer.                                                              
  "Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?"          
he asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?"                
  "He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away          
from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling          
prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the           
Moscow ladies are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does      
it! We never hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him,      
they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov      
and Anatole Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads."                     
                                                     {BK8|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed      
plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string        
of large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk          
dress and took a long time settling into her place.                         
  Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and            
pearls and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the        
pearls. While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time        
the lady looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and      
smiled. She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the              
count, who knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.          
  "Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll        
call to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls      
with me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used        
to forget us. Is he here?"                                                  
  "Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively      
at Natasha.                                                                 
  Count Rostov resumed his seat.                                            
                                                     {BK8|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  "Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha.                           
  "Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily            
fall in love with."                                                         
  Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the              
conductor tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in        
the stalls, and the curtain rose.                                           
  As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent,        
and all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and           
all the women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole             
attention with eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look      
at it.                                                                      
                                                                            
BK8|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides           
was some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a        
cloth stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls      
in red bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk          
dress sat apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of             
green cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When they had           
finished their song the girl in white went up to the prompter's box         
and a man with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding         
a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his          
arms about.                                                                 
  First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang,            
then they both paused while the orchestra played and the man                
fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to      
start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater      
began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage- who      
represented lovers- began smiling, spreading out their arms, and            
bowing.                                                                     
  After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood,           
all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow      
the opera nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted            
cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke,           
and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was         
all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and               
unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused        
at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them           
the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but      
they all seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and           
expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I suppose it has        
to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in turn at the        
rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women          
in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box, who- apparently         
quite unclothed- sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking her            
eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded the           
whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little by         
little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not               
experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she         
was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought,           
the strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through        
her mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box      
and singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to             
touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then          
to lean over to Helene and tickle her.                                      
  At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song,         
a door leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box           
creaked, and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's            
Kuragin!" whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the      
newcomer, and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an         
exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box with a                
self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom           
she had seen and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was         
now in an adjutant's uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot.          
He moved with a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous         
had he not been so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn          
such an expression of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though           
the performance was proceeding, he walked deliberately down the             
carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly jingling and his             
handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at Natasha he               
approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her         
box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a            
motion toward Natasha.                                                      
  "Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did        
not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of         
his lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and         
sat down beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and          
offhand way that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He              
winked at him gaily, smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra      
screen.                                                                     
                                                      {BK8|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  "How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And         
how handsome they both are!"                                                
  Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some             
intrigue of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just      
because he had said she was "charmante."                                    
  The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about,        
going out and coming in.                                                    
  Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations            
very simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile           
conveyed to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding,      
and went away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and      
congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she      
had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,         
everything seemed simple and natural.                                       
  The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and          
Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.                                         
                                                     {BK8|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most        
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another      
in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.                       
  During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in         
front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha      
knew he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even      
turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought was its        
most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre         
appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their            
arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since          
Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing          
anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at        
and indicating the Rostovs' box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew              
animated and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box.      
When he got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to           
her for a long time. While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a          
man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and something told her it           
was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed        
straight into her eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that          
it seemed strange to be so near him, to look at him like that, to be        
so sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with him.                  
  In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there        
was a round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were           
raised over the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep         
notes while many people appeared from right and left wearing black          
cloaks and holding things like daggers in their hands. They began           
waving their arms. Then some other people ran in and began dragging         
away the maiden who had been in white and was now in light blue.            
They did not drag her away at once, but sang with her for a long            
time and then at last dragged her off, and behind the scenes something      
metallic was struck three times and everyone knelt down and sang a          
prayer. All these things were repeatedly interrupted by the                 
enthusiastic shouts of the audience.                                        
  During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she           
saw Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair,        
staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her        
and it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.            
  When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to           
the Rostovs' box- her whole bosom completely exposed- beckoned the old      
count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had        
entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.                 
                                                     {BK8|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  "Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The      
whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know then!"            
  Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so            
pleased by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with          
pleasure.                                                                   
  "I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it          
you're not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"                     
  Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a               
fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think- especially         
what was flattering- quite simply and naturally.                            
  "Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I          
am not staying here long this time- nor are you- I will try to amuse        
them. I have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get      
to know you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely           
smile. "I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard      
he is getting married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski,         
Prince Andrew Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis,                
implying that she knew of his relation to Natasha. To get better            
acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come into her      
box for the rest of the performance, and Natasha moved over to it.          
                                                     {BK8|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many             
candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on      
the walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a              
queen. The king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang            
something badly and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had        
been first in white and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and      
stood beside the throne with her hair down. She sang something              
mournfully, addressing the queen, but the king waved his arm severely,      
and men and women with bare legs came in from both sides and began          
dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily      
and one of the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating         
from the others, went behind the wings, adjusted her bodice,                
returned to the middle of the stage, and began jumping and striking         
one foot rapidly against the other. In the stalls everyone clapped and      
shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went into a corner of the              
stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra struck up more loudly,        
and this man with bare legs jumped very high and waved his feet             
about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles      
a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries         
began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the man               
stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men           
and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the         
sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm            
came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the         
orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number             
away, and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise         
and clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone           
began shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought         
this strange. She look about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.               
  "Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.                              
  "Oh, yes," replied Natasha.                                               
                                                                            
BK8|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the      
door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush          
against anyone.                                                             
  "Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting      
uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.                                           
  Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young            
officer and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was          
as handsome at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her         
and told her he had long wished to have this happiness- ever since the      
Naryshkins' ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered           
pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with      
women than among men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha           
was strangely and agreeably struck by the fact that there was               
nothing formidable in this man about whom there was so much talk,           
but that on the contrary his smile was most naive, cheerful, and            
good-natured.                                                               
  Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a        
previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.                 
  "And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as          
an old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume                 
tournament; you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We          
shall all meet at the Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said         
he.                                                                         
                                                     {BK8|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face,        
her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was           
enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel         
constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt         
that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his      
eye so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking          
into his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that         
barrier of modesty she had always felt between herself and other            
men. She did not know how it was that within five minutes she had come      
to feel herself terribly near to this man. When she turned away she         
feared he might seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her          
on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that          
they were closer to one another than she had ever been to any man.          
Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father, as if asking what it      
all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation with a general and        
did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said nothing but what        
they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad of it!"               
  During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's             
prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to           
break the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the             
question and blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she      
was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage         
her.                                                                        
  "At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant      
ce sont les jolies femmes,* isn't that so? But now I like it very much      
indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the         
costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to         
her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the              
prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as         
a pledge!"                                                                  
-                                                                           
  *Are the pretty women.                                                    
                                                    {BK8|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did        
himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an                
improper intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if      
she had not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she        
felt that he was there, behind, so close behind her.                        
  "How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked      
herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked           
straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the           
good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just        
as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt          
with horror that no barrier lay between him and her.                        
  The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay.             
Natasha went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive      
to the world she found herself in. All that was going on before her         
now seemed quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous            
thoughts of her betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country      
did not once recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote         
past.                                                                       
  In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his        
arm about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he             
disappeared down below. That was the only part of the fourth act            
that Natasha saw. She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of         
this was Kuragin whom she could not help watching. As they were             
leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their carriage,         
and helped them in. As he was putting Natasha in he pressed her arm         
above the elbow. Agitated and flushed she turned round. He was looking      
at her with glittering eyes, smiling tenderly.                              
                                                    {BK8|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think         
over what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince              
Andrew she was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after        
the opera, she gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the         
room.                                                                       
  "O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?"           
She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to      
realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to                  
understand what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark,      
obscure, and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater          
where the bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped          
about to the music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the      
nearly naked Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried           
"bravo!"- there in the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear      
and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible.             
"What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this               
gnawing of conscience I am feeling now?" she thought.                       
  Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all      
she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple             
views would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at        
such a confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by      
herself.                                                                    
  "Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with      
soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen      
to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all.           
Nobody will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself.        
"So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to           
repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why        
isn't he here?" Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some        
instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing         
had happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew           
had perished. And again in imagination she went over her whole              
conversation with Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and            
tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.             
                                                                            
BK8|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent         
him away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand        
rubles a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more,           
which his creditors demanded from his father.                               
  His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for      
the last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as              
adjutant to the commander in chief- a post his father had procured for      
him- and would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to      
him Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.                                       
  Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's         
house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him        
after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and         
gave him money under the guise of loans.                                    
  As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had        
turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that          
he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French           
actresses- with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to      
be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at                 
Danilov's or other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through,            
outvying everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the         
best society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies,      
and he flirted with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run          
after the unmarried girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most      
of them plain. There was a special reason for this, as he had got           
married two years before- a fact known only to his most intimate            
friends. At that time while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish           
landowner of small means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole      
had very soon abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to      
send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass himself off      
as a bachelor.                                                              
  Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with      
others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that was              
impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had         
never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of                   
considering how his actions might affect others or what the                 
consequences of this or that action of his might be. He was                 
convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so         
God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year      
and always occupy a prominent position in society. He believed this so      
firmly that others, looking at him, were persuaded of it too and did        
not refuse him either a leading place in society or money, which he         
borrowed from anyone and everyone and evidently would not repay.            
                                                     {BK8|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning.          
He was not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still          
less could he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed           
his father by spoiling his own career, and he laughed at                    
distinctions of all kinds. He was not mean, and did not refuse              
anyone who asked of him. All he cared about was gaiety and women,           
and as according to his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in             
these tastes, and he was incapable of considering what the                  
gratification of his tastes entailed for others, he honestly                
considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues and bad        
people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.               
  Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence          
similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope        
of forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all      
will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."                                 
  Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and      
his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling,         
and dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin         
and made use of him for his own ends.                                       
  Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and             
audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and        
connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set,         
made use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting           
the other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole,        
the very process of dominating another's will was in itself a               
pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov.                             
  Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after the      
opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the            
attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his        
intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was              
incapable of considering what might come of such love-making, as he         
never had any notion of the outcome of any of his actions.                  
                                                    {BK8|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  "She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied               
Dolokhov.                                                                   
  "I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?"         
  "You'd better wait till she's married...."                                
  "You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,"          
pursued Anatole.                                                            
  "You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said              
Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!"                       
                                                    {BK8|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  "Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a                 
good-humored laugh.                                                         
                                                                            
BK8|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came          
to see them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something           
which they concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking        
about the old prince and planning something, and this disquieted and        
offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice          
that day sent a manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he      
had come. He had not arrived. She suffered more now than during her         
first days in Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him were now         
added the unpleasant recollection of her interview with Princess            
Mary and the old prince, and a fear and anxiety of which she did not        
understand the cause. She continually fancied that either he would          
never come or that something would happen to her before he came. She        
could no longer think of him by herself calmly and continuously as she      
had done before. As soon as she began to think of him, the                  
recollection of the old prince, of Princess Mary, of the theater,           
and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The question again presented      
itself whether she was not guilty, whether she had not already              
broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found herself recalling      
to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and every shade in        
the play of expression on the face of the man who had been able to          
arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To           
the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less         
tranquil and happy than before.                                             
  On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at        
her parish church- the Church of the Assumption built over the              
graves of victims of the plague.                                            
  "I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently            
priding herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every      
where. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently        
and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there        
in giving concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just                 
self-indulgence!"                                                           
  Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her             
whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the      
servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church.        
At her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had        
vodka and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was      
the holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern             
face, which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.        
  After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room        
where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a               
servant announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna         
rose with a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid        
calls, and announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas              
Bolkonski to have an explanation with him about Natasha.                    
                                                     {BK8|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited        
on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having            
shut herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied               
herself trying on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice          
without sleeves and only tacked together, and was turning her head          
to see in the glass how the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room      
the animated sounds of her father's voice and another's- a woman's-         
that made her flush. It was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off        
the bodice before the door opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a      
purple velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with      
good-humored amiable smiles.                                                
  "Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha.                  
"Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said         
she to Count Rostov who had followed her in. "How can you live in           
Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George         
will recite at my house tonight and there'll be some people, and if         
you don't bring your lovely girls- who are prettier than                    
Mademoiselle George- I won't know you! My husband is away in Tver or I      
would send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must!            
Between eight and nine."                                                    
  She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied          
respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the           
looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely.         
She did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually          
praising Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised      
them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze,"           
which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one          
like it.                                                                    
  "But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.                       
  A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as      
if she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess               
Bezukhova who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and              
important and was now so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt        
almost in love with this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind.           
Helene for her part was sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to      
give her a good time. Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha        
together, and she was calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The          
idea of throwing her brother and Natasha together amused her.               
                                                    {BK8|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha      
for drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her           
own way heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs        
she called her protegee aside.                                              
  "My brother dined with me yesterday- we nearly died of laughter-          
he ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly,           
quite madly, in love with you, my dear."                                    
  Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.                              
  "How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You          
must certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a        
reason to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your         
fiance would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to            
death."                                                                     
  "So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre- that          
good Pierre- have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right."        
And again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now           
seemed simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind,         
and evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought          
Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.                   
                                                    {BK8|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
  Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having         
evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too          
agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly.          
In answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all         
right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of              
Countess Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening,             
Marya Dmitrievna remarked:                                                  
  "I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise      
you to; however, if you've promised- go. It will divert your                
thoughts," she added, addressing Natasha.                                   
                                                                            
BK8|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a         
good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count          
Rostov was displeased to see that the company consisted almost              
entirely of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct.           
Mademoiselle George was standing in a corner of the drawing room            
surrounded by young men. There were several Frenchmen present, among        
them Metivier who from the time Helene reached Moscow had been an           
intimate in her house. The count decided not to sit down to cards or        
let his girls out of his sight and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle      
George's performance was over.                                              
  Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.        
Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and              
followed her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same             
feeling she had had at the opera- gratified vanity at his admiration        
of her and fear at the absence of a moral barrier between them.             
  Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of         
her beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George      
went out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people      
began arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a          
chair for Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count,      
who never lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down        
behind her.                                                                 
  Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red          
shawl draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for         
her, and assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was             
audible.                                                                    
  Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience           
and began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for        
her son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,      
lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse      
sounds, rolling her eyes.                                                   
                                                     {BK8|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  "Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.                 
  Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor          
understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt               
herself again completely borne away into this strange senseless world-      
so remote from her old world- a world in which it was impossible to         
know what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat          
Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened        
sense of expectancy.                                                        
  After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded           
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.                           
  "How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had            
also risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.             
  "I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following            
Natasha. He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him.            
"You are enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never               
ceased..."                                                                  
                                                    {BK8|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  "Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his          
daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything           
stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring         
eyes.                                                                       
  After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and           
Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.                    
  The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil        
her improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked               
Natasha for a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand        
and told her she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the           
ecossaise, which she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when        
they happened to be by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha         
lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was such confident             
tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she could not,           
whilst looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her eyes.       
  "Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,"           
she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.                                    
  Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.                     
                                                    {BK8|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I        
am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are              
enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."                                     
  Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open            
frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly        
anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and           
the Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to        
remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt        
his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her              
father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that      
Helene had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love,        
and that she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene           
had disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and      
said in a tender voice:                                                     
  "I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never         
see you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he      
brought his face close to hers.                                             
  His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she      
saw nothing but them.                                                       
  "Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being        
painfully pressed. "Natalie?"                                               
                                                    {BK8|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.            
  Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she            
felt herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her         
dress were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then,        
red and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and        
moved toward the door.                                                      
  "One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole.                      
  She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to           
her what had happened and to which she could find no answer.                
  "Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not        
knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.         
                                                    {BK8|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went        
away without staying for supper.                                            
  After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was              
tormented by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or            
Prince Andrew. She loved Prince Andrew- she remembered distinctly           
how deeply she loved him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there         
was no doubt. "Else how could all this have happened?" thought she.         
"If, after that, I could return his smile when saying good-by, if I         
was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the         
first. It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could           
not help loving him. What am I to do if I love him and the other one        
too?" she asked herself, unable to find an answer to these terrible         
questions.                                                                  
                                                                            
BK8|CH14                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to      
move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna               
appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking           
uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to                 
intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the         
same as usual.                                                              
  After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat            
down in her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.               
  "Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is      
my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince        
Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to      
begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had      
to say!"                                                                    
  "Well, and he?" asked the count.                                          
  "He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use          
of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya            
Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home      
to Otradnoe... and wait there."                                             
                                                     {BK8|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  "Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.                                              
  "Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your           
betrothed comes here now- there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but          
alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to         
you."                                                                       
  Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its                
reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better        
to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the           
wedding, against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.            
  "That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took        
her," said the old count.                                                   
  "No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But          
if he won't- that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for         
something in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so             
there is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after         
you. Though I don't like letting you go, it is the best way. So go,         
with God's blessing!"                                                       
                                                    {BK8|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed          
it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.                          
  "She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's      
afraid you might think that she does not like you."                         
  "But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.                                  
  "Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.                            
  "I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied            
Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold        
and angry resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her            
more intently and to frown.                                                 
                                                    {BK8|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  "Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is          
true! Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room      
to read Princess Mary's letter.                                             
  Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the                        
misunderstanding that had occurred between them. Whatever her father's      
feelings might be, she begged Natasha to believe that she could not         
help loving her as the one chosen by her brother, for whose                 
happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything.                            
  "Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is                    
ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be        
forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes        
his son happy." Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time          
when she could see her again.                                               
  After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to         
answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and                 
mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all          
that had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has               
happened, and now all is changed," she thought as she sat with the          
letter she had begun before her. "Must I break off with him? Must I         
really? That's awful... and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she      
went to Sonya and began sorting patterns with her.                          
  After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess          
Mary's letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it        
be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that         
went before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its            
former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She      
vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of         
happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and        
at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of           
yesterday's interview with Anatole.                                         
                                                    {BK8|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  "Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in           
complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I      
have to choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only,"         
she thought, "to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it         
from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is          
spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's      
love, in which I have lived so long?"                                       
  "Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious      
air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a             
letter.                                                                     
  "Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without        
thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from           
Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only            
that it was a letter from him- from the man she loved. Yes, she             
loved him, or else how could that have happened which had happened?         
And how could she have a love letter from him in her hand?                  
  With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter             
which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she             
found in it an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.       
  "Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you      
or to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he         
went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him- for      
this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her- but that        
if she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power         
could hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her        
away and carry her off to the ends of the earth.                            
                                                    {BK8|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  "Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for           
the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each         
word of it.                                                                 
  That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and              
proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache,          
remained at home.                                                           
                                                                            
BK8|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and        
to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open        
on the table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up           
and read it.                                                                
  As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in        
her face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find           
it. Her face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep      
herself from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and               
agitation, sat down in an armchair and burst into tears.                    
  "How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she            
have left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go        
to such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What         
will Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is      
the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before         
yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that      
she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it        
was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a           
thing!"                                                                     
  Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning         
her face.                                                                   
  "Natasha!" she said, just audibly.                                        
                                                     {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.                                              
  "Ah, you're back?"                                                        
  And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment        
of awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of         
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.              
  "Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded.                           
  "Yes," answered Sonya softly.                                             
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  Natasha smiled rapturously.                                               
  "No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you      
any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he               
writes... Sonya..."                                                         
  Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.            
  "And Bolkonski?" she asked.                                               
  "Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You         
don't know what love is...."                                                
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  "But, Natasha, can that be all over?"                                     
  Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not           
grasp the question.                                                         
  "Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.                 
  "Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just             
listen!" said Natasha, with momentary vexation.                             
  "But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How        
is it you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you        
have only seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're        
joking! In three days to forget everything and so..."                       
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  "Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred      
years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't      
understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced        
and kissed her.                                                             
  "I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it        
too, but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as          
before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his              
slave, and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave!                
Whatever he orders I shall do. You don't understand that. What can I        
do? What can I do, Sonya?" cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened        
expression.                                                                 
  "But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it            
like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so        
far?" she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.      
  "I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you         
understand? I love him!"                                                    
  "Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,          
bursting into tears.                                                        
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  "What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!"      
declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be           
separated...."                                                              
  When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity         
for her friend.                                                             
  "But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to      
you? Why doesn't he come to the house?"                                     
  Natasha did not answer her questions.                                     
  "For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me,"             
Natasha entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such              
matters! I have confided in you...."                                        
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 30}
  "But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked           
Sonya. "Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince            
Andrew gave you complete freedom- if it is really so; but I don't           
believe it! Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can      
be?"                                                                        
  Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question        
presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know        
how to answer it.                                                           
  "I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!"           
  Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.                            
  "If there were reasons..." she began.                                     
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 35}
  But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.               
  "Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you              
understand?" she cried.                                                     
  "Does he love you?"                                                       
  "Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her           
friend's lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you      
have seen him."                                                             
  "But if he is dishonorable?"                                              
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 40}
  "He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha.                  
  "If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions        
or cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to      
him, and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely.                          
  "But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha.                            
  "Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think          
of your father and of Nicholas."                                            
  "I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you           
say he is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed           
Natasha. "Go away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go,         
for God's sake go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily,      
in a voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into            
sobs and ran from the room.                                                 
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 45}
  Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote         
that answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all         
the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their                 
misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the              
magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her      
she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her if she        
had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife. At        
that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.       
-                                                                           
  On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on               
Wednesday the count went with the prospective purchaser to his              
estate near Moscow.                                                         
  On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big        
dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there.        
At that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she         
spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through              
dinner she was more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was      
the first to begin the explanation Sonya expected.                          
  "There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,"         
Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to        
be praised. "We have had an explanation today."                             
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 50}
  "Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're      
not angry with me! Tell me everything- the whole truth. What did he         
say?"                                                                       
  Natasha became thoughtful.                                                
  "Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I        
had promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him."              
  Sonya sighed sorrowfully.                                                 
  "But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she.                            
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 55}
  "Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why        
do you think so badly of me?"                                               
  "I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..."                 
  "Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what         
a man he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think           
badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?"           
  Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her.         
The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face        
became, the more serious and stern grew Sonya's.                            
  "Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I             
haven't spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him,         
Natasha. Why this secrecy?"                                                 
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 60}
  "Again, again!" interrupted Natasha.                                      
  "Natasha, I am afraid for you!"                                           
  "Afraid of what?"                                                         
  "I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely,           
and was herself horrified at what she had said.                             
  Anger again showed in Natasha's face.                                     
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 65}
  "And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not            
your business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me              
alone, leave me alone! I hate you!"                                         
  Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast.                                           
  "I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran        
out of the room.                                                            
  Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the            
same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the           
house, taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once               
abandoning them.                                                            
  Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her      
out of her sight.                                                           
                                                    {BK8|CH15 ^paragraph 70}
  The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha        
sat by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting               
something and that she made a sign to an officer who drove past,            
whom Sonya took to be Anatole.                                              
  Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed        
that at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and            
unnatural state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she      
did not finish, and laughed at everything.                                  
  After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly             
waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at      
the door learned that another letter had been delivered.                    
  Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some              
dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did      
not let her in.                                                             
  "She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of           
anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in         
her face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya              
remembered. "Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what          
am I to do?" thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly              
indicated that Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is           
away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation?           
But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince        
Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she           
really has already refused Bolkonski- she sent a letter to Princess         
Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who         
had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway,"         
thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now or never I must        
prove that I remember the family's goodness to me and that I love           
Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for three nights I'll not leave this        
passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the            
family be disgraced," thought she.                                          
                                                                            
BK8|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie              
Rostova's abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by          
Dolokhov a few days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening      
at Natasha's door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been           
put into execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the      
back porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka        
he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of          
Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a            
marriage ceremony over them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to            
wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they      
would hasten abroad with post horses.                                       
  Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand            
rubles he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand                
borrowed with Dolokhov's help.                                              
  Two witnesses for the mock marriage- Khvostikov, a retired petty          
official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and        
Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an                 
unbounded affection for Kuragin- were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's          
front room.                                                                 
  In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with      
Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling           
cloak and high boots, at an open desk on which lay abacus and some          
bundles of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to         
and fro from the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the         
study to the room behind, where his French valet and others were            
packing the last of his things. Dolokhov was counting the money and         
noting something down.                                                      
  "Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand."                     
                                                     {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "Give it to him, then," said Anatole.                                     
  "Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water        
for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said            
Dolokhov, showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?"                      
  "Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to            
Dolokhov and looking straight before him with a smile that did not          
leave his face.                                                             
  Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to Anatole with an          
ironic smile:                                                               
  "Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!"       
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only               
knew... it's the devil knows what!"                                         
  "No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously.        
It's no joke, this plot you've hatched."                                    
  "What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a        
grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left           
the room.                                                                   
  Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole           
had gone out.                                                               
  "You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm               
talking sense. Come here, come here!"                                       
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his           
attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.                    
  "Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why            
should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything           
for you? Who found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the          
money? I did it all."                                                       
  "Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And             
Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.                                       
  "I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a        
dangerous business, and if you think about it- a stupid business.           
Well, you'll carry her off- all right! Will they let it stop at             
that? It will come out that you're already married. Why, they'll            
have you in the criminal court...."                                         
  "Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a             
grimace. "Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the             
partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have             
reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already        
put to Dolokhov a hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I            
have come to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went         
on, crooking one finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it      
is valid, no matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it.             
Isn't that so? And don't talk to me, don't, don't."                         
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a         
mess!"                                                                      
  "Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the        
room, but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of         
Dolokhov with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What?        
Feel how it beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart.        
"What a foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in        
French. "What?"                                                             
  Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes      
looked at him- evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of          
him.                                                                        
  "Well and when the money's gone, what then?"                              
  "What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a               
thought of the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why        
talk nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!"                       
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  Anatole went into the back room.                                          
  "Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the              
servants.                                                                   
  Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to          
bring something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went      
into the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.                    
  Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and             
smiling pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to             
himself.                                                                    
  "Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from      
the other room.                                                             
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 30}
  "I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile.                  
  "Come! Balaga is here."                                                   
  Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous           
troyka driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and         
had given them good service with his troykas. More than once when           
Anatole's regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in      
the evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back         
again the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape      
when pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town            
with gypsies and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than            
once in their service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles        
in the streets of Moscow and had always been protected from the             
consequences by "my gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more        
than one horse in their service. More than once they had beaten him,        
and more than once they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira,        
which he loved; and he knew more than one thing about each of them          
which would long ago have sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They             
often called Balaga into their orgies and made him drink and dance          
at the gypsies', and more than one thousand rubles of their money           
had passed through his hands. In their service he risked his skin           
and his life twenty times a year, and in their service had lost more        
horses than the money he had from them would buy. But he liked them;        
liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a           
driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop through      
the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy shouts behind        
him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was impossible to go any faster. He          
liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant who, more dead      
than alive, was already hurrying out of his way. "Real gentlemen!"          
he considered them.                                                         
  Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and        
because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga                  
bargained, charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and          
rarely drove himself, generally letting his young men do so. But            
with "his gentlemen" he always drove himself and never demanded             
anything for his work. Only a couple of times a year- when he knew          
from their valets that they had money in hand- he would turn up of a        
morning quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help him.         
The gentlemen always made him sit down.                                     
  "Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he         
would say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go        
to the fair."                                                               
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 35}
  And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a           
thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.                                    
  Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about          
twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck,                
glittering little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine,                  
dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin.                          
  On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the           
front corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a            
small, black hand.                                                          
  "Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing.                                      
  "How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!"                                 
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 40}
  "Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand          
to Anatole who had just come in.                                            
  "I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's             
shoulders, "do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service....         
What horses have you come with? Eh?"                                        
  "As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga.         
  "Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there          
in three hours. Eh?"                                                        
  "When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink.        
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 45}
  "Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole,         
suddenly rolling his eyes.                                                  
  "Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my               
gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast          
we'll go!"                                                                  
  "Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down."                                     
  "Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov.                                           
  "I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych."                                           
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 50}
  "Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large      
glass of Madeira for him.                                                   
  The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After                
refusing it for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with         
a red silk handkerchief he took out of his cap.                             
  "And when are we to start, your excellency?"                              
  "Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind,        
Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?"                                      
  "That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be           
there in time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven         
hours? I think you remember that, your excellency?"                         
                                                    {BK8|CH16 ^paragraph 55}
  "Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole,             
smilingly at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed              
rapturously at him with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka,      
it took one's breath away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of      
loaded sleighs and drove right over two of them. Eh?"                       
  "Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd            
harnessed two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went        
on, turning to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those      
animals flew forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew            
numb in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins- 'Catch hold         
yourself, your excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom        
of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them           
on, there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The devils      
took us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it."                
                                                                            
BK8|CH17                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later             
wearing a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily        
set on one side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having              
looked in a mirror, and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he        
had assumed before it, he lifted a glass of wine.                           
  "Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!"         
said Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a           
moment "...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the      
others.                                                                     
  Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to          
make something touching and solemn out of this address to his               
comrades. He spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest        
slightly swayed one leg.                                                    
  "All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my      
youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when         
shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time- now        
farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying           
his glass flung it on the floor.                                            
  "To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and             
wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.                                      
                                                     {BK8|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.                          
  "Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!                             
  "Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole.                                      
  Balaga was about to leave the room.                                       
  "No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down.      
That's the way."                                                            
                                                    {BK8|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  They shut the door and all sat down.                                      
  "Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising.                           
  Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all      
went out into the vestibule.                                                
  "And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to         
Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what         
elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll          
rush out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if         
you delay at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's        
frozen in a minute and must go back- but you wrap the fur cloak             
round her first thing and carry her to the sleigh."                         
  The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak.                              
                                                    {BK8|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  "Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he             
shouted so that his voice rang far through the rooms.                       
  A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black         
eyes and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a         
sable mantle on her arm.                                                    
  "Here, I don't grudge it- take it!" she said, evidently afraid of         
her master and yet regretful of her cloak.                                  
  Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over                
Matrena, and wrapped her up in it.                                          
  "That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the         
collar up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered.      
"And then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to          
meet the gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant          
smile was seen.                                                             
                                                    {BK8|CH17 ^paragraph 20}
  "Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my              
revels here are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-by,      
Matrena, wish me luck!"                                                     
  "Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her          
gypsy accent.                                                               
  Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers          
were holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and          
holding his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and        
Dolokhov got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated           
themselves in the other sleigh.                                             
  "Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga.                                      
  "Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka        
tore down the Nikitski Boulevard.                                           
                                                    {BK8|CH17 ^paragraph 25}
  "Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga      
and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be      
heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage;            
something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the         
Arbat Street.                                                               
  After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to      
rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old                
Konyusheny Street.                                                          
  The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and            
Anatole and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the         
gate Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant         
ran out.                                                                    
  "Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out               
directly," said she.                                                        
  Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the           
courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.                    
                                                    {BK8|CH17 ^paragraph 30}
  He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman.               
  "Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass,        
intercepting any retreat.                                                   
  "To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless            
whisper.                                                                    
  "Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in."                          
  "Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!"                 
                                                    {BK8|CH17 ^paragraph 35}
  Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and      
was struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With         
a last desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when          
Anatole ran back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket,      
and ran back with him to the troyka.                                        
                                                                            
BK8|CH18                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made        
her confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she            
read it and went into Natasha's room with it in her hand.                   
  "You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word."        
  Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but                
tearless eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the            
yard porter to admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but      
not to let them out again, and having told the footman to bring them        
up to her, she seated herself in the drawing room to await the              
abductors.                                                                  
  When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run         
away again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced      
through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward        
midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket.        
Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for           
God's sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna             
unlocked the door and went in without giving her an answer....              
"Disgusting, abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only      
sorry for her father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath.           
"Hard as it may be, I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and            
will hide it from the count." She entered the room with resolute            
steps. Natasha lying on the sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and         
she did not stir. She was in just the same position in which Marya          
Dmitrievna had left her.                                                    
  "A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings      
with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I          
speak to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when when      
I speak! You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd          
treat you differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will             
conceal it."                                                                
                                                     {BK8|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved            
with noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna          
glanced round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.       
  "It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said      
in her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added.       
  She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward          
her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how          
Natasha looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed,      
her cheeks sunken.                                                          
  "Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered,           
wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious              
effort and sinking down again into her former position.                     
  "Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie              
still, stay like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't          
tell you how guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your          
father comes back tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?"                      
                                                    {BK8|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.                                     
  "Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?"             
  "I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha.                 
  "That's all the same," continued Dmitrievna. "If they hear of             
this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he           
challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?"                       
  "Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who             
asked you to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and             
looking malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.                                    
                                                    {BK8|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  "But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry            
again. "Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to        
the house? Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing              
girl?... Well, if he had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't      
have found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a      
scoundrel, a wretch- that's a fact!"                                        
  "He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If         
you hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it?            
Sonya, why?... Go away!"                                                    
  And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which          
people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned.          
Marya Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out:                  
  "Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw            
herself back on the sofa.                                                   
  Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on      
her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that          
nobody would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would           
undertake to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had        
happened. Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she        
grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under      
her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some         
lime-flower water, but Natasha did not respond to her.                      
                                                    {BK8|CH18 ^paragraph 20}
  "Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went of the room      
supposing Natasha to be asleep.                                             
  But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open            
eyes she looked straight before her. All that night she did not             
sleep or weep and did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her         
several times.                                                              
  Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time        
for lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the              
affair with the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was        
nothing to keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess            
whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had      
been very unwell the day before and that they had sent for the doctor,      
but that she was better now. Natasha had not left her room that             
morning. With compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she           
sat at the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past and          
hurriedly glancing round at anyone who entered the room. She was            
evidently expecting news of him and that he would come or would             
write to her.                                                               
  When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the          
sound of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and           
malevolent expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What          
is the matter with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count.            
  After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill."                    
                                                    {BK8|CH18 ^paragraph 25}
  In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so            
dejected and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she            
assured him that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry.           
Marya Dmitrievna confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had            
happened. From the pretense of illness, from his daughter's                 
distress, and by the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya                   
Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during      
his absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that anything          
disgraceful had happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his      
own cheerful tranquillity, that he avoided inquiries and tried to           
assure himself that nothing particularly had happened; and he was only      
dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their return to the             
country.                                                                    
                                                                            
BK8|CH19                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to      
go away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs         
came to Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to             
carry out his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's         
widow, who had long since promised to hand over to him some papers          
of her deceased husband's.                                                  
  When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya          
Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great              
importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre           
had been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling         
for her was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's        
fiancee. Yet some fate constantly threw them together.                      
  "What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he      
as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew           
would hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the        
house.                                                                      
  On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.                 
  "Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head.        
In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering        
the dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin         
dashed past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of             
military dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver           
collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his         
white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded      
hair besprinkled with powdery snow.                                         
                                                     {BK8|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  "Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees               
nothing beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so      
he is always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give          
to be like him!" he thought enviously.                                      
  In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with        
his fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.       
  When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the        
window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at          
him, frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.         
  "What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room.      
  "Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I         
lived in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"               
                                                    {BK8|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,      
Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew        
without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was               
Anatole Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and         
with whom Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in        
order to be married secretly.                                               
  Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was         
told him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince                
Andrew's deeply loved affianced wife- the same Natasha Rostova who          
used to be so charming- should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole      
who was already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in      
love with him as to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre        
could not conceive and could not imagine.                                   
  He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha,         
whom he had known from a child, with this new conception of her             
baseness, folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all         
alike!" he said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man         
unfortunate enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied           
Prince Andrew to the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded        
pride, and the more he pitied his friend the more did he think with         
contempt and even with disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him      
in the ballroom with such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that      
Natasha's soul was overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation,        
and that it was not her fault that her face happened to assume an           
expression of calm dignity and severity.                                    
  "But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna.        
"He could not marry- he is married!"                                        
  "Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna.        
"A nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him- expecting         
him since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on        
expecting him."                                                             
                                                    {BK8|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
  After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and          
giving vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya           
Dmitrievna told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that        
the count or Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew        
of this affair (which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge          
Anatole to a duel, and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his               
brother-in-law in her name to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set      
eyes on him again. Pierre- only now realizing the danger to the old         
count, Nicholas, and Prince Andrew- promised to do as she wished.           
Having briefly and exactly explained her wishes to him, she let him go      
to the drawing room.                                                        
  "Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing             
either," she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use                 
expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after         
Pierre.                                                                     
  Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning      
Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski.                       
  "Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What            
troubles one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret      
having come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she           
has broken off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true         
this engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is an             
excellent man, but still, with his father's disapproval they                
wouldn't have been happy, and Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it         
has been going on so long, and to take such a step without father's or      
mother's consent! And now she's ill, and God knows what! It's hard,         
Count, hard to manage daughters in their mother's absence...."              
  Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the          
subject, but the count returned to his troubles.                            
                                                    {BK8|CH19 ^paragraph 20}
  Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.                             
  "Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to           
see you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come."        
  "Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to        
send him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it        
all was!"                                                                   
  And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the      
room.                                                                       
  When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha      
did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by           
Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the             
corridor to Natasha's room.                                                 
                                                    {BK8|CH19 ^paragraph 25}
  Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and         
her eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look         
the moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed             
fixedly at him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or      
like the others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he            
evidently did not exist for her.                                            
  "He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre         
and addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the           
truth."                                                                     
  Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded              
animal looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.                         
  "Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a               
feeling of pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do,            
"whether it is true or not should make no difference to you,                
because..."                                                                 
  "Then it is not true that he's married!"                                  
                                                    {BK8|CH19 ^paragraph 30}
  "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."                                              
                                                    {BK8|CH19 ^paragraph 35}
  She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands          
that they should leave her alone.                                           
                                                                            
BK8|CH20                                                                    
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at        
once. He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the             
thought of whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a             
difficulty in breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the            
gypsies', nor at Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all      
was going on as usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were      
sitting about in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town          
news. The footman having greeted him, knowing his habits and his            
acquaintances, told him there was a place left for him in the small         
dining room and that Prince Michael Zakharych was in the library,           
but Paul Timofeevich had not yet arrived. One of Pierre's                   
acquaintances, while they were talking about the weather, asked if          
he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova which was talked of          
in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and said it was                
nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked everyone          
about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and another            
that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this calm,      
indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his             
soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come,         
and as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove          
home.                                                                       
  Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with                 
Dolokhov, consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate               
affair. It seemed to him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he        
drove to his sister's to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting.         
When Pierre returned home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his         
valet informed him that Prince Anatole was with the countess. The           
countess' drawing room was full of guests.                                  
  Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his           
return- at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever-             
entered the drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.                 
  "Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You             
don't know what a plight our Anatole..."                                    
  She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head,          
in his glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of      
that rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced           
after his duel with Dolokhov.                                               
                                                     {BK8|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
  "Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife.         
"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French.           
  Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready          
to follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward          
himself and was leading him from the room.                                  
  "If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene,           
but Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.                          
  Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face              
betrayed anxiety.                                                           
  Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed             
Anatole without looking at him.                                             
                                                    {BK8|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  "You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to             
elope with her, is that so?"                                                
  "Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in             
French), "I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to          
me in that tone."                                                           
  Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized          
Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him        
from side to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of         
terror.                                                                     
  "When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre.            
  "Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button        
of his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.         
                                                    {BK8|CH20 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                   
                                                    {BK8|CH20 ^paragraph 20}
  "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?..."                                                       
                                                    {BK8|CH20 ^paragraph 25}
  "Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must           
never breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess            
Rostova. I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark      
of conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence.           
  Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.                      
  "After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there          
is such a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you         
are ruining a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse            
yourself with women like my wife- with them you are within your             
rights, for they know what you want of them. They are armed against         
you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to          
marry her... to deceive, to kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is      
as mean as beating an old man or a child?..."                               
  Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with      
a questioning look.                                                         
  "I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more                 
confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't        
want to," he said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of        
his lower jaw, "but you have used such words to me- 'mean' and so           
on- which as a man of honor I can't allow anyone to use."                   
                                                    {BK8|CH20 ^paragraph 30}
  Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he        
wanted.                                                                     
  "Though it was tete-a-tete," Anatole continued, "still I can't..."        
  "Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically.                    
  "You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do      
as you wish, eh?"                                                           
  "I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to      
forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if      
you require money for your journey..."                                      
                                                    {BK8|CH20 ^paragraph 35}
  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.                                     
                                                                            
BK8|CH21                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of      
her wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole             
house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill,          
having, as Marya Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the        
night after she had been told that Anatole was married, with some           
arsenic she had stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had      
been so frightened that she woke Sonya and told her what she had done.      
The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was           
now out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the              
question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent      
for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and Sonya, who had a                  
tear-stained face, but he could not see Natasha.                            
  Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip           
about the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these        
rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his         
brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to           
Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and                 
re-establish Natasha's reputation.                                          
  He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day      
to the old prince's for news of him.                                        
  Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from        
Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which      
Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits          
than usual and awaited his son with great impatience.                       
  Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from           
Prince Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come          
to see him.                                                                 
                                                     {BK8|CH21 ^paragraph 5}
  As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his         
father Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement          
(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and             
given it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of             
Natasha's elopement, with additions.                                        
  Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see           
him next morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost           
the same state as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering           
the drawing room to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated        
voice about some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's          
voice and another now and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out      
to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of the room             
where Prince Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy        
with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both          
at what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news          
of Natasha's faithlessness.                                                 
  "He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not        
let him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far         
better, than I expected. Evidently it had to be...."                        
  "But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre.              
  Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not                
understand how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the           
study. Prince Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health,         
but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in             
civilian dress facing his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly             
disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about          
Speranski- the news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had         
just reached Moscow.                                                        
                                                    {BK8|CH21 ^paragraph 10}
  "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."                                                   
                                                    {BK8|CH21 ^paragraph 15}
  After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish         
frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre,           
and about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his           
son's tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation          
about Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.           
  "If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,      
they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I        
do not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!"      
  Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only         
too familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous         
matters in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too        
intimate. When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took              
Pierre's arm and asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A      
bed had been made up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks           
stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took out a small casket,         
from which he drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently        
and very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his      
lips compressed.                                                            
  "Forgive me for troubling you..."                                         
  Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his      
broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated           
Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he         
continued:                                                                  
                                                    {BK8|CH21 ^paragraph 20}
  "I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard           
reports of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of      
that kind. Is that true?"                                                   
  "Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew                   
interrupted him.                                                            
  "Here are her letters and her portrait," said he.                         
  He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.                
  "Give this to the countess... if you see her."                            
                                                    {BK8|CH21 ^paragraph 25}
  "She is very ill," said Pierre.                                           
  "Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince                 
Kuragin?" he added quickly.                                                 
  "He left long ago. She has been at death's door."                         
  "I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled            
like his father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.                     
  "So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his            
hand?" said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.                    
                                                    {BK8|CH21 ^paragraph 30}
  "He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre.            
  Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his            
father.                                                                     
  "And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said.            
  "He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre.                 
  "Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess             
Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all          
that is good."                                                              
                                                    {BK8|CH21 ^paragraph 35}
  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?"                                    
                                                    {BK8|CH21 ^paragraph 40}
  Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.        
  The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same        
as always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed         
her satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at        
them Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the      
Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to               
mention the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone          
else.                                                                       
  At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was           
becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with        
his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an              
unnatural animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood.          
                                                                            
BK8|CH22                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXII                                                              
-                                                                           
  That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the              
commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the           
Club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya          
Dmitrievna who was interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken           
the news. Ten minutes later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.                 
  "Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she.             
  "But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not            
been tidied up."                                                            
  "No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya.         
  Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.                             
                                                     {BK8|CH22 ^paragraph 5}
  "When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind,        
don't tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the             
heart to scold her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be              
pitied."                                                                    
  Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated,        
with a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected          
to find her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently      
undecided whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.             
  Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as         
usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her         
arms hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she      
went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different      
expression of face.                                                         
  "Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your         
friend- is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that      
everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once      
to apply to you..."                                                         
  Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then          
he had reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he         
now felt so sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for            
reproach.                                                                   
                                                    {BK8|CH22 ^paragraph 10}
  "He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped           
and breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.                    
  "Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..."                       
  He did not know what to say.                                              
  Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think      
she had meant.                                                              
  "No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never         
be. I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only          
that I beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...."          
                                                    {BK8|CH22 ^paragraph 15}
  She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.                            
  A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart.      
  "I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said             
Pierre. "But... I should like to know one thing...."                        
  "Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked.                                        
  "I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how          
to refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him- "did you love        
that bad man?"                                                              
                                                    {BK8|CH22 ^paragraph 20}
  "Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at      
all...."                                                                    
  She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness,           
and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his           
spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed.                             
  "We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his            
gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha.               
  "We won't speak of it, my dear- I'll tell him everything; but one         
thing I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help,           
advice, or simply to open your heart to someone- not now, but when          
your mind is clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it.          
"I shall be happy if it's in my power..."                                   
  Pierre grew confused.                                                     
                                                    {BK8|CH22 ^paragraph 25}
  "Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed               
Natasha and turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.             
  He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it          
he was amazed at his own words.                                             
  "Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her.        
  "Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and           
self-abasement.                                                             
   "All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest,      
cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this           
moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"                        
                                                    {BK8|CH22 ^paragraph 30}
  For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and      
tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.                
  Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom,                
restraining tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without        
finding the sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his           
sleigh.                                                                     
  "Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman.                      
  "Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to      
the Club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in           
comparison with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in      
comparison with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him        
through her tears.                                                          
  "Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost              
Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and        
inhaled the air with joy.                                                   
                                                    {BK8|CH22 ^paragraph 35}
  It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the      
black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky      
did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane        
things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been            
raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark      
starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it,        
above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all           
sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to           
the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the           
enormous and brilliant comet of 18l2- the comet which was said to           
portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre,              
however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling          
of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears,      
at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with               
inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly-         
like an arrow piercing the earth- to remain fixed in a chosen spot,         
vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white         
light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre         
that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own              
softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.                 
                                                                            
BK9                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                BOOK NINE: 1812                             
                                                                            
BK9|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating      
of the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces-            
millions of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army-         
moved from the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which         
since 1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth          
of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian             
frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to             
human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated               
against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries,           
thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms,        
and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of         
all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them         
did not at the time regard as being crimes.                                 
  What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes?        
The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the        
wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the         
Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of               
Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.                     
  Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,           
Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to         
have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for              
Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I             
consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there           
would have been no war.                                                     
  We can understand that the matter seemed like that to                     
contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was            
caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St.      
Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that      
the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of                
Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him;          
to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System         
which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the         
chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them                   
employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of          
re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that         
time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between           
Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed         
from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178.          
It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of           
other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points      
of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to         
posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and         
perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem                  
insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of                 
Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon        
was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was        
astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what               
connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter        
and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men            
from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk      
and Moscow and were killed by them.                                         
  To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried      
away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event          
with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes               
present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes           
the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of        
causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by           
its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its      
impotence- apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident           
causes- to occasion the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or      
that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as      
Napoleon's refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to         
restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and         
had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also           
refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon's army and      
the war could not have occurred.                                            
                                                      {BK9|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                                        
                                                     {BK9|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                               
                                                     {BK9|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  *"To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."                     
-                                                                           
  The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and      
by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and          
co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the           
nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's            
wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia- undertaken (as it              
seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace,        
the French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his              
people's inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations,      
and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining         
advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors      
he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the           
opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to         
attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides,           
and millions and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to        
the event that was happening or coincided with it.                          
  When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of         
its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it          
is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes      
it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?                      
                                                     {BK9|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                            
                                                                            
BK9|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent      
three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,      
and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the           
emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings      
and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and             
diamonds of his own- that is, which he had taken from other kings-          
to the Empress of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us,           
tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise- who regarded him as her         
husband, though he had left another wife in Paris- left her grieved by      
the parting which she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the                
diplomatists still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and          
worked zealously to that end, and though the Emperor Napoleon               
himself wrote a letter to Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere,        
and sincerely assured him that he did not want war and would always         
love and honor him- yet he set off to join his army, and at every           
station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his troops          
from west to east. He went in a traveling coach with six horses,            
surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort, along the road to        
Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these towns thousands      
of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.                           
  The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses           
carried him in the same direction. On the tenth of June,* coming up         
with the army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on         
the estate of a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.                     
-                                                                           
  *Old style.                                                               
-                                                                           
                                                      {BK9|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the               
Niemen, and, changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank      
in order to select a place for the crossing.                                
  Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the           
wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of           
Moscow (Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the        
Scythia into which Alexander the Great had marched- Napoleon                
unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic                
considerations, ordered an advance, and the next day his army began to      
cross the Niemen.                                                           
  Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,      
which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and        
looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out          
of the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown         
across the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence,            
were on the lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in      
an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of      
his tent on the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive           
l'Empereur!" and one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of      
the vast forest that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and      
on by the three bridges to the other side.                                  
  "Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself,          
things get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So         
these are the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au        
revoir, Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au            
revoir. Good luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!...          
preur!- If they make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you            
Minister of Kashmir- that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah!               
hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks- those rascals- see how they run! Vive         
l'Empereur! There he is, do you see him? I've seen him twice, as I see      
you now. The little corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the      
veterans.... Vive l'Empereur!" came the voices of men, old and              
young, of most diverse characters and social positions. On the faces        
of all was one common expression of joy at the commencement of the          
long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion to the man in the        
gray coat who was standing on the hill.                                     
  On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse         
was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one          
of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant           
and rapturous acclamations which he evidently endured only because          
it was impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love of           
him by such shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him                
everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military cares         
that had occupied him from the time he joined the army. He rode across      
one of the swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply      
to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kovno, preceded by            
enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with             
delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him through the troops. On      
reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped near a regiment of              
Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.                                       
                                                     {BK9|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                               
                                                     {BK9|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of         
the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough          
to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called        
for his horse and rode to his quarters.                                     
  Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were            
sent to their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from      
which they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and      
with difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they      
had got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted            
"Vivat!" and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been        
but where he no longer was and at that moment considered themselves         
happy.                                                                      
  That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian           
paper money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as               
quickly as possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a      
letter containing information about the orders to the French army           
had been found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish             
colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled        
in the Legion d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.             
  Quos vult perdere dementat.*                                              
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK9|CH2 ^paragraph 20}
  *Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.                        
                                                                            
BK9|CH3                                                                     
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than         
a month. reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for      
the war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor         
had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The          
vacillation between the various plans that were proposed had even           
increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each      
of the three armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no        
supreme commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume         
that responsibility himself.                                                
  The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody-          
tired of waiting- prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who         
surrounded the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend         
his time pleasantly and forget that war was impending.                      
  In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by      
the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the        
Polish aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be         
given for the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly           
received. The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected         
money by subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to      
the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a         
landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the          
fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner,              
regatta, and fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat.           
  The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and      
his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian                 
frontier, Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by         
his aides-de-camp at Bennigsen's country house.                             
  It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters             
declared that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one      
place. Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who        
had followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the        
refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of             
beauty. The Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.               
                                                      {BK9|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the        
present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not        
an aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris      
was now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought        
patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of        
his own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen           
her for a long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was          
enjoying the favors of a very important personage and Boris had only        
recently married, they met as good friends of long standing.                
  At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a              
suitable partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris.          
They were the third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling      
bare shoulders which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze           
gown, talked to her of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware      
of it himself and unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased          
to observe the Emperor who was in the same room. The Emperor was not        
dancing, he stood in the doorway, stopping now one pair and now             
another with gracious words which he alone knew how to utter.               
  As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev,           
one of those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him           
and contrary to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to      
a Polish lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked          
inquiringly at Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only           
acted thus because there were important reasons for so doing, nodded        
slightly to the lady and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to        
speak before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He         
took Balashev by the arm and crossed the room with him,                     
unconsciously clearing a path seven yards wide as the people on both        
sides made way for him. Boris noticed Arakcheev's excited face when         
the sovereign went out with Balashev. Arakcheev looked at the               
Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with his red nose, stepped        
forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor to address him.          
(Boris understood that Arakcheev envied Balashev and was displeased         
that evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise than        
through himself.)                                                           
  But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated              
garden without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and                
glancing wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.         
  All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka,          
he was worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and        
how he could find it out before others. In the figure in which he           
had to choose two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to           
choose Countess Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the              
veranda, and glided over the parquet to the door opening into the           
garden, where, seeing Balashev and the Emperor returning to the             
veranda, he stood still. They were moving toward the door. Boris,           
fluttering as if he had not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed      
close to the doorpost with bowed head.                                      
                                                     {BK9|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally            
affronted, was finishing with these words:                                  
  "To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as          
long as a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to           
Boris that it gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was        
satisfied with the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but         
displeased that Boris had overheard it.                                     
  "Let no one know of it! " the Emperor added with a frown.                 
  Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his             
eyes, slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and      
remained there about another half-hour.                                     
  Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army           
had crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain        
important personages that much that was concealed from others was           
usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their             
estimation.                                                                 
                                                     {BK9|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was           
particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations,           
and at a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of          
indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased      
him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On          
returning home at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary,         
Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and a                
rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the      
words being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a              
single armed Frenchman remained on Russian soil.                            
  Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:                       
-                                                                           
  Monsieur mon frere,                                                       
                                                     {BK9|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I have kept my        
engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian         
frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in        
which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression,          
that Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with      
me from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons        
on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him        
would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a               
pretext for aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has          
declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I        
was informed of it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and          
ordered him to remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend          
to shed the blood of our peoples for such a misunderstanding, and           
consents to withdraw your troops from Russian territory, I will regard      
what has passed as not having occurred and an understanding between us      
will be possible. In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see           
myself forced to repel an attack that nothing on my part has provoked.      
It still depends on Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the              
calamity of another war. I am, etc.,                                        
                                           (signed) Alexander               
                                                                            
BK9|CH4                                                                     
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having      
sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him          
to take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When               
dispatching Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he         
would not make peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on            
Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to Napoleon.              
Alexander did not insert them in his letter to Napoleon, because            
with his characteristic tact he felt it would be injudicious to use         
them at a moment when a last attempt at reconciliation was being made,      
but he definitely instructed Balashev to repeat them personally to          
Napoleon.                                                                   
  Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied          
by a bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts          
at the village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn.      
There he was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.                           
  A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform           
and a shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt.              
Balashev did not do so at once, but continued to advance along the          
road at a walking pace.                                                     
  The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,        
advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his            
saber, and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he            
deaf that he did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was.      
The noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about           
regimental matters without looking at the Russian general.                  
  After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after        
conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in            
general being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the              
service, Balashev found it very strange here on Russian soil to             
encounter this hostile, and still more this disrespectful, application      
of brute force to himself.                                                  
                                                      {BK9|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air           
was fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road        
from the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one          
after another, like bubbles rising in water.                                
  Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer            
from the village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French            
hussars looked silently at one another from time to time.                   
  A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed,         
came riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse,                
accompanied by two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their            
horses all looked smart and well kept.                                      
  It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full      
trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of          
martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit      
of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.             
  The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was              
polite and evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past      
his soldiers and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to          
be presented to the Emperor would most likely be satisfied                  
immediately, as the Emperor's quarters were, he believed, not far off.      
                                                     {BK9|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French            
hussar horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and         
stared with curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the             
other end of the village. The colonel said that the commander of the        
division was a mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev           
and conduct him to his destination.                                         
  The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.           
  They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a        
group of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a           
black horse with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall           
man with plumes in his hat and black hair curling down to his               
shoulders. He wore a red mantle, and stretched his long legs forward        
in French fashion. This man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his           
plumes flowing and his gems and gold lace glittering in the bright          
June sunshine.                                                              
  Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the         
bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was                 
galloping toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when           
Julner, the French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of            
Naples!" It was, in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though        
it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he           
was called so, and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore      
assumed a more solemn and important air than formerly. He was so            
sure that he really was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of         
his departure from that city, while walking through the streets with        
his wife, some Italians called out to him: "Viva il re!"* he turned to      
his wife with a pensive smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know      
that I am leaving them tomorrow!"                                           
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK9|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  *"Long live the king."                                                    
-                                                                           
  But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and            
pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly,          
after he had been ordered to return to military service- and                
especially since his last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when           
his august brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you           
should reign in my way, but not in yours!"- he had cheerfully taken up      
his familiar business, and- like a well-fed but not overfat horse that      
feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts- he          
dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and          
gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without           
himself knowing why or whither.                                             
  On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its            
long hair curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner,         
and looked inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully      
informed His Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not         
pronounce.                                                                  
  "De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the          
difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to make      
your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly             
condescension.                                                              
                                                     {BK9|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity        
instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his           
natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the           
withers of Balashev's horse and said:                                       
  "Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a                
circumstance of which he was unable to judge.                               
  "Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does           
not desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the        
words Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation               
unavoidable in frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a      
novelty.                                                                    
  Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to            
"Monsieur de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige!* and he felt it              
incumbent on him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs         
with Alexander's envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving      
a few steps away from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to        
pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly. He                
referred to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand      
that he should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially when            
that demand became generally known and the dignity of France was            
thereby offended.                                                           
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK9|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  *"Royalty has its obligations."                                           
-                                                                           
  Balashev replied that there was nothing offensive in the demand,          
because..." but Murat interrupted him.                                      
  "Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he         
asked unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.                        
  Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of      
the war.                                                                    
                                                     {BK9|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  "Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my          
heart I wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and          
that the war begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as              
possible!" said he, in the tone of a servant who wants to remain            
good friends with another despite a quarrel between their masters.          
  And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of         
his health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had        
spent with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal        
dignity, Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which          
he had stood at his coronation. and, waving his right arm, said:            
  "I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your               
mission," and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers,        
and his glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were                
respectfully awaiting him.                                                  
  Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very         
soon be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the        
next village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him          
as the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the             
corps commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to         
Marshal Davout.                                                             
                                                                            
BK9|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexander- though not a      
coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to        
express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.                      
  In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are           
necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always          
appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and           
their proximity to the head of the government may be. This                  
inevitability alone can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore           
out a grenadier's mustache with his own hands, whose weak nerves            
rendered him unable to face danger, and who was neither an educated         
man nor a courtier, was able to maintain his powerful position with         
Alexander, whose own character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle.           
  Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a                 
peasant's hut, writing- he was auditing accounts. Better quarters           
could have been found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who      
purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a            
justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they are always         
hard at work and in a hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of         
life when, as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty      
shed?" the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure         
and necessity of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows             
animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity.              
Davout allowed himself that pleasure when Balashev was brought in.          
He became still more absorbed in his task when the Russian general          
entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at Balashev's face,         
which was animated by the beauty of the morning and by his talk with        
Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still more and             
sneered malevolently.                                                       
  When he noticed in Balashev's face the disagreeable impression            
this reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked            
what he wanted.                                                             
  Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because        
Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor             
Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to              
inform him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation,            
Davout, after hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.                  
                                                      {BK9|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  "Where is your dispatch?" he inquired. "Give it to me. I will send        
it to the Emperor."                                                         
  Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to        
the Emperor.                                                                
  "Your Emperor's orders are obeyed in your army, but here," said           
Davout, "you must do as you're told."                                       
  And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his        
dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer      
on duty.                                                                    
  Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor's letter and          
laid it on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging          
on it, laid across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the        
inscription.                                                                
                                                     {BK9|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,"           
protested Balashev, "but permit me to observe that I have the honor to      
be adjutant general to His Majesty...."                                     
  Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the      
signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashev's face.         
  "You will be treated as is fitting," said he and, putting the packet      
in his pocket, left the shed.                                               
  A minute later the marshal's adjutant, de Castres, came in and            
conducted Balashev to the quarters assigned him.                            
  That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the              
barrels.                                                                    
                                                     {BK9|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashev to come to      
him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the        
baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one      
except Monsieur de Castres.                                                 
  After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his              
impotence and insignificance- particularly acute by contrast with           
the sphere of power in which he had so lately moved- and after several      
marches with the marshal's baggage and the French army, which occupied      
the whole district, Balashev was brought to Vilna- now occupied by the      
French- through the very gate by which he had left it four days             
previously.                                                                 
  Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne,         
came to Balashev and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon's wish to         
honor him with an audience.                                                 
  Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had             
stood in front of the house to which Balashev was conducted, and now        
two French grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front      
and with shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and           
Uhlans and a brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals,         
who were waiting for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch,      
round his saddle horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received          
Balashev in the very house in Vilna from which Alexander had                
dispatched him on his mission.                                              
                                                                            
BK9|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the           
luxury and magnificence of Napoleon's court.                                
  The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many      
generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates- several of whom        
Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia- were waiting.      
Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before           
going for his ride.                                                         
  After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came         
into the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashev          
to follow him.                                                              
  Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which led          
into a study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had               
dispatched him on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He        
heard hurried footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened      
rapidly; all was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of      
other steps, firm and resolute- they were those of Napoleon. He had         
just finished dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform,               
opening in front over a white waistcoat so long that it covered his         
rotund stomach, white leather breeches tightly fitting the fat              
thighs of his short legs, and Hessian boots. His short hair had             
evidently just been brushed, but one lock hung down in the middle of        
his broad forehead. His plump white neck stood out sharply above the        
black collar of his uniform, and he smelled of Eau de Cologne. His          
full face, rather young-looking, with its prominent chin, wore a            
gracious and majestic expression of imperial welcome.                       
  He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head                
slightly thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad           
thick shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had        
that imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live      
in comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits         
that day.                                                                   
                                                      {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow, and coming      
up to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of      
his time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but          
is sure he will always say the right thing and say it well.                 
  "Good day, General!" said he. "I have received the letter you             
brought from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you." He         
glanced with his large eyes into Balashav's face and immediately            
looked past him.                                                            
  It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest him at          
all. Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested          
him. Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because          
everything in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his         
will.                                                                       
  "I do not, and did not, desire war," he continued, "but it has            
been forced on me. Even now" (he emphasized the word) "I am ready to        
receive any explanations you can give me."                                  
  And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for             
dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly          
moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashev      
was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter         
into negotiations.                                                          
                                                     {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the        
Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he had prepared long before:         
"Sire! The Emperor, my master..." but the sight of the Emperor's            
eyes bent on him confused him. "You are flurried- compose yourself!"        
Napoleon seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked      
at Balashev's uniform and sword.                                            
  Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the           
Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his                 
passports a sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on his         
own initiative and without his sovereign's assent, that the Emperor         
Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with England.            
  "Not yet!" interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to        
his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashev        
might proceed.                                                              
  After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev added            
that the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter            
into negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashev hesitated:      
he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his        
letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov and had      
told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered these              
words, "So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil," but         
some complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though        
he wished to do so. He grew confused and said: "On condition that           
the French army retires beyond the Niemen."                                 
  Napoleon noticed Balashev's embarrassment when uttering these last        
words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to              
quiver rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began            
speaking in a louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the        
speech that followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his eyes,        
involuntarily noticed the quivering of Napoleon's left leg which            
increased the more Napoleon raised his voice.                               
                                                     {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  "I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander," he began.           
"Have I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it?         
I have waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to             
begin negotiations, what is demanded of me?" he said, frowning and          
making an energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump           
hand.                                                                       
  "The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire," replied            
Balashev.                                                                   
  "The Niemen?" repeated Napoleon. "So now you want me to retire            
beyond the Niemen- only the Niemen?" repeated Napoleon, looking             
straight at Balashev.                                                       
  The latter bowed his head respectfully.                                   
  Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from             
Pomerania, only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded.            
Napoleon turned quickly and began to pace the room.                         
                                                     {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  "You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen        
before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months         
ago the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the        
Oder, and yet you are willing to negotiate."                                
  He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and           
again stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that his left leg      
was quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in           
its stern expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing            
Napoleon was conscious of. "The vibration of my left calf is a great        
sign with me," he remarked at a later date.                                 
  "Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be            
made to a Prince of Baden, but not to me!" Napoleon almost screamed,        
quite to his own surprise. "If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I          
could not accept such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But        
who first joined his army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer      
me negotiations when I have expended millions, when you are in              
alliance with England, and when your position is a bad one. You             
offer me negotiations! But what is the aim of your alliance with            
England? What has she given you?" he continued hurriedly, evidently no      
longer trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss its               
possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and power and              
Alexander's errors and duplicity.                                           
  The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the           
intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and               
showing that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had           
begun talking, and the more he talked the less could he control his         
words.                                                                      
  The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt               
himself and insult Alexander- just what he had least desired at the         
commencement of the interview.                                              
                                                     {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  "I hear you have made peace with Turkey?"                                 
  Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.                                    
  "Peace has been concluded..." he began.                                   
  But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all         
the talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of                 
eloquence and unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so      
prone.                                                                      
  "Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining         
Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those             
provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes," he went on, "I promised and          
would have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now      
he won't have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united            
them to his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia         
from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the         
Great could not have done more," said Napoleon, growing more and            
more excited as he paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashev        
almost the very words he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. "All      
that, he would have owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!"      
he repeated several times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold         
snuffbox, lifted it to his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.                
                                                     {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 30}
  "What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander's might have been!"          
  He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as the latter          
tried to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.                       
  "What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained           
through my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders          
in perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to surround himself with my        
enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and             
Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;             
Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French         
subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but           
all the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807           
and who should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander's          
mind.... Granted that were they competent they might be made use            
of," continued Napoleon- hardly able to keep pace in words with the         
rush of thoughts that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and          
strong he was (in his perception the two were one and the same)-            
"but they are not even that! They are neither fit for war nor peace!        
Barclay is said to be the most capable of them all, but I cannot say        
so, judging by his first movements. And what are they doing, all these      
courtiers? Pfuel proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and      
Barclay, called on to act, does not know what to decide on, and time        
passes bringing no result. Bagration alone is a military man. He's          
stupid, but he has experience, a quick eye, and resolution.... And          
what role is your young monarch playing in that monstrous crowd?            
They compromise him and throw on him the responsibility for all that        
happens. A sovereign should not be with the army unless he is a             
general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering these words as a direct         
challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired to be a             
military commander.                                                         
  "The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven't even been            
able to defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of        
the Polish provinces. Your army is grumbling."                              
  "On the contrary, Your Majesty," said Balashev, hardly able to            
remember what had been said to him and following these verbal               
fireworks with difficulty, "the troops are burning with eagerness..."       
                                                     {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 35}
  "I know everything!" Napoleon interrupted him. "I know everything. I      
know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You         
have not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number.      
I give you my word of honor," said Napoleon, forgetting that his            
word of honor could carry no weight- "I give you my word of honor that      
I have five hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the                
Vistula. The Turks will be of no use to you; they are worth nothing         
and have shown it by making peace with you. As for the Swedes- it is        
their fate to be governed by mad kings. Their king was insane and they      
changed him for another- Bernadotte, who promptly went mad- for no          
Swede would ally himself with Russia unless he were mad."                   
  Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his         
nose.                                                                       
  Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon's remarks, and             
would have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing        
to say something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the               
alleged insanity of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when          
Russia is on her side Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon         
gave an angry exclamation to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that          
state of irritability in which a man has to talk, talk, and talk,           
merely to convince himself that he is in the right. Balashev began          
to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean his dignity and         
felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man, he shrank before the         
transport of groundless wrath that had evidently seized Napoleon. He        
knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon had any                 
significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them            
when he came to his senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking      
at the movements of Napoleon's stout legs and trying to avoid               
meeting his eyes.                                                           
  "But what do I care about your allies?" said Napoleon. "I have            
allies- the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight         
like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them."                
  And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered         
this obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still stood silently              
before him in the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon             
abruptly turned round, drew close to Balashev's face, and,                  
gesticulating rapidly and energetically with his white hands, almost        
shouted:                                                                    
                                                     {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 40}
  "Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I'll wipe it off the        
map of Europe!" he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and      
he struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. "Yes, I      
will throw you back beyond the Dvina and beyond the Dnieper, and            
will re-erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind      
of Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to        
you. That is what you have gained by alienating me!" And he walked          
silently several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders              
twitching.                                                                  
  He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again,         
lifted it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashev.      
He paused, looked ironically straight into Balashev's eyes, and said        
in a quiet voice:                                                           
  "And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!"               
  Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the        
Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon           
was silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not               
listening to him. Balashev said that in Russia the best results were        
expected from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to            
say, "I know it's your duty to say that, but you don't believe it           
yourself. I have convinced you."                                            
  When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox,            
sniffed at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal.         
The door opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully,              
handed the Emperor his hat and gloves; another brought hima pocket          
handkerchief. Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to             
Balashev:                                                                   
                                                     {BK9|CH6 ^paragraph 45}
  "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.                            
                                                                            
BK9|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  After all that Napoleon had said to him- those bursts of anger and        
the last dryly spoken words: "I will detain you no longer, General;         
you shall receive my letter," Balashev felt convinced that Napoleon         
would not wish to see him, and would even avoid another meeting with        
him- an insulted envoy- especially as he had witnessed his unseemly         
anger. But, to his surprise, Balashev received, through Duroc, an           
invitation to dine with the Emperor that day.                               
  Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.        
  Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed          
no sign of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that      
morning, but, on the contrary, tried to reassure Balashev. It was           
evident that he had long been convinced that it was impossible for him      
to make a mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was           
right, not because it harmonized with any idea of right and wrong, but      
because he did it.                                                          
  The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vilna,        
where crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him.            
From all the windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs,            
flags, and his monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies,              
welcoming him, waved their handkerchiefs to him.                            
  At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him, Napoleon not only           
treated him amiably but behaved as if Balashev were one of his own          
courtiers, one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to         
rejoice at his success. In the course of conversation he mentioned          
Moscow and questioned Balashev about the Russian capital, not merely        
as an interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit,        
but as if convinced that Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered          
by his curiosity.                                                           
                                                      {BK9|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  "How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it         
true that Moscow is called 'Holy Moscow'? How many churches are             
there in Moscow?" he asked.                                                 
  And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred             
churches, he remarked:                                                      
  "Why such a quantity of churches?"                                        
  "The Russians are very devout," replied Balashev.                         
  "But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign          
of the backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to                 
Caulaincourt for appreciation of this remark.                               
                                                     {BK9|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.       
  "Every country has its own character," said he.                           
  "But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that," said Napoleon.       
  "I beg your Majesty's pardon," returned Balashev, "besides Russia         
there is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries."        
  This reply of Balashev's, which hinted at the recent defeats of           
the French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at             
Alexander's court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon's            
dinner, where it passed unnoticed.                                          
                                                     {BK9|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that          
they were puzzled as to what Balashev's tone suggested. "If there is a      
point we don't see it, or it is not at all witty," their expressions        
seemed to say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon        
did not notice it at all and naively asked Balashev through what towns      
the direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on           
the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as "all roads lead      
to Rome," so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and           
"among them the road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose."             
Balashev involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this        
reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before                    
Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of the road from Petersburg      
to Moscow and of his Petersburg reminiscences.                              
  After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which         
four days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander.                
Napoleon sat down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned          
Balashev to a chair beside him.                                             
  Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than        
any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to      
consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was                  
surrounded by men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after         
his dinner, Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned      
to him with a pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.                      
  "They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied?            
Strange, isn't it, General?" he said, evidently not doubting that this      
remark would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his,         
Napoleon's, superiority to Alexander.                                       
  Balashev made no reply and bowed and bowed his head in silence.           
                                                     {BK9|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  "Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were            
deliberating," continued Napoleon with the same derisive and                
self-confident smile. "What I can't understand," he went on, "is            
that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal          
enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may         
the same?" and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this        
thought turned him back on to the track of his morning's anger,             
which was still fresh in him.                                               
  "And let him know that I will do so!" said Napoleon, rising and           
pushing his cup away with his hand. "I'll drive all his Wurttemberg,        
Baden, and Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I'll drive them         
out. Let him prepare an asylum for them in Russia!"                         
  Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to      
make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help         
hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression;      
he treated Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now        
fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master's            
humiliation.                                                                
  "And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What      
is the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to           
reign and not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a         
responsibility?"                                                            
  Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up           
and down the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly,          
went up to Balashev and with a slight smile, as confidently,                
quickly, and simply as if he were doing something not merely                
important but pleasing to Balashev, he raised his hand to the               
forty-year-old Russian general's face and, taking him by the ear,           
pulled it gently, smiling with his lips only.                               
                                                     {BK9|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  To have one's ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the                
greatest honor and mark of favor at the French court.                       
  "Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don't you        
say anything?" said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to        
be the adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. "Are the        
horses ready for the general?" he added, with a slight inclination          
of his head in reply to Balashev's bow. "Let him have mine, he has a        
long way to go!"                                                            
  The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent to                
Alexander. Every detail of the interview was communicated to the            
Russian monarch, and the war began...                                       
                                                                            
BK9|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to          
Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet           
Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching         
Petersburg he inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the      
city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on        
his track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment from the        
Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in             
Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who was          
always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov suggested that he              
should accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general      
had been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having             
received an appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.         
  Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge              
Kuragin. He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause      
it might compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to          
meet Kuragin personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel.        
But he again failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince        
Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a new country,            
amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After         
his betrothed had broken faith with him- which he felt the more             
acutely the more he tried to conceal its effects- the surroundings          
in which he had been happy became trying to him, and the freedom and        
independence he had once prized so highly were still more so. Not only      
could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he      
lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later              
enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at             
Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to        
recall them and them and the bright and boundless horizons they had         
revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters      
unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more            
eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if      
that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above           
him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down,      
in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.                  
  Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was      
the simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutuzov's           
staff, he applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and        
surprised Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not              
having found Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it              
necessary to rush back to Russia after him, but all the same he knew        
that however long it might be before he met Kuragin, despite his            
contempt for him and despite all the proofs he deduced to convince          
himself that it was not worth stooping to a conflict with him- he knew      
that when he did meet him he would not be able to resist calling him        
out, any more than a ravenous man can help snatching at food. And           
the consciousness that the insult was not yet avenged, that his rancor      
was still unspent, weighed on his heart and poisoned the artificial         
tranquillity which he managed to obtain in Turkey by means of               
restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and ambitious activity.         
  In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached              
Bucharest- where Kutuzov had been living for two months, passing his        
days and nights with a Wallachian woman- Prince Andrew asked Kutuzov        
to transfer him to the Western Army. Kutuzov, who was already weary of      
Bolkonski's activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very        
readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.              
  Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped          
at Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on           
his way, being only two miles off the Smolensk highroad. During the         
last three years there had been so many changes in his life, he had         
thought, felt, and seen so much (having traveled both in the east           
and the west), that on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange         
and unexpected to find the way of life there unchanged and still the        
same in every detail. He entered through the gates with their stone         
pillars and drove up the avenue leading to the house as if he were          
entering an enchanted, sleeping castle. The same old stateliness,           
the same cleanliness, the same stillness reigned there, and inside          
there was the same furniture, the same walls, sounds, and smell, and        
the same timid faces, only somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the      
same timid, plain maiden getting on in years, uselessly and                 
joylessly passing the best years of her life in fear and constant           
suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the same coquettish,                  
self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her existence and full        
of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become more                  
self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had          
brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and             
talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same              
narrowly intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old        
prince had changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which         
left a noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was         
the same as ever, only showing still more irritability and                  
skepticism as to what was happening in the world. Little Nicholas           
alone had changed. He had grown, become rosier, had curly dark hair,        
and, when merry and laughing, quite unconsciously lifted the upper lip      
of his pretty little mouth just as the little princess used to do.          
He alone did not obey the law of immutability in the enchanted,             
sleeping castle. But though externally all remained as of old, the          
inner relations of all these people had changed since Prince Andrew         
had seen them last. The household was divided into two alien and            
hostile camps, who changed their habits for his sake and only met           
because he was there. To the one camp belonged the old prince,              
Madmoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other Princess             
Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and maids.         
                                                      {BK9|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but          
they were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for      
whose sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them      
all feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first         
day, he was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became          
morosely dumb and retired to his apartments directly after dinner.          
In the evening, when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse         
him, began to tell him of the young Count Kamensky's campaign, the old      
prince began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for      
her superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he        
said, was the only person really attached to him.                           
  The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of             
Princess Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and            
that by indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince            
Nicholas. The old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter      
and that her life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not         
help tormenting her and that she deserved it. "Why does Prince Andrew,      
who sees this, say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me         
a scoundrel, or an old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own          
daughter at a distance and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He         
doesn't understand, so I must explain it, and he must hear me out,"         
thought the old prince. And he began explaining why he could not put        
up with his daughter's unreasonable character.                              
  "If you ask me," said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was           
censuring his father for the first time in his life), "I did not            
wish to speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank          
opinion. If there is any misunderstanding and discord between you           
and Mary, I can't blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and         
respects you. Since you ask me," continued Prince Andrew, becoming          
irritable- as he was always liable to do of late- "I can only say that      
if there are any misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless        
woman, who is not fit to be my sister's companion."                         
  The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural          
smile disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew      
could not get accustomed.                                                   
  "What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You've already been talking it          
over! Eh?"                                                                  
                                                     {BK9|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "Father, I did not want to judge," said Prince Andrew, in a hard and      
bitter tone, "but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall      
say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame- the one to              
blame- is that Frenchwoman."                                                
  "Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!" said the old man        
in a low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some                
embarrassment, but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: "Be off, be        
off! Let not a trace of you remain here!..."                                
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded        
him to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did        
not leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne           
and Tikhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next          
day, before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son's rooms. The boy,        
curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee,      
and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell        
into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this          
pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He          
sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or           
regret at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms          
with him, and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more          
to him was that he sought and did not find in himself the former            
tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the      
boy and taking him on his knee.                                             
  "Well, go on!" said his son.                                              
                                                     {BK9|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  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...."               
                                                     {BK9|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her          
tears began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the         
room.                                                                       
  "Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what- what trash- can        
cause people misery!" he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess        
Mary.                                                                       
  She understood that when speaking of "trash" he referred not only to      
Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man        
who had ruined his own happiness.                                           
  "Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!" she said, touching           
his elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears.        
"I understand you" (she looked down). "Don't imagine that sorrow is         
the work of men. Men are His tools." She looked a little above              
Prince Andrew's head with the confident, accustomed look with which         
one looks at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. "Sorrow is          
sent by Him, not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to           
blame. If you think someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We      
have no right to punish. And then you will know the happiness of            
forgiving."                                                                 
  "If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman's virtue.         
But a man should not and cannot forgive and forget," he replied, and        
though till that moment he had not been thinking of Kuragin, all his        
unexpended anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.                          
                                                     {BK9|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  "If Mary is already persuading me forgive, it means that I ought          
long ago to have punished him," he thought. And giving her no               
further reply, he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he      
would meet Kuragin who he knew was now in the army.                         
  Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she            
knew how unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being           
reconciled to him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably         
soon be back again from the army and would certainly write to his           
father, but that the longer he stayed now the more embittered their         
differences would become.                                                   
  "Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men        
are never to blame," were the last words he heard from his sister when      
he took leave of her.                                                       
  "Then it must be so!" thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the        
avenue from the house at Bald Hills. "She, poor innocent creature,          
is left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits.           
The old man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is        
growing up and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he            
will deceive or be deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself        
don't know. I want to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give           
him a chance to kill and laugh at me!                                       
  These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they          
were all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only          
senseless things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after         
another to Prince Andrew's mind.                                            
                                                                            
BK9|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the         
end of June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied           
the fortified camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying        
to effect a junction with the first one from which it was said to be        
cut off by large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the          
general course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one                   
anticipated any danger of invasion of the Russian provinces, and no         
one thought the war would extend farther than the western, the Polish,      
provinces.                                                                  
  Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been                 
assigned, on the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or      
large village in the vicinity of the camp, the immense number of            
generals and courtiers accompanying the army were living in the best        
houses of the villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of         
six miles. Barclay de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from           
the Emperor. He received Bolkonski stiffly and coldly and told him          
in his foreign accent that he would mention him to the Emperor for a        
decision as to his employment, but asked him meanwhile to remain on         
his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrew had hoped to find            
with the army, was not there. He had gone to Petersburg, but Prince         
Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind was occupied by the interests        
of the center that was conducting a gigantic war, and he was glad to        
be free for a while from the distraction caused by the thought of           
Kuragin. During the first four days, while no duties were required          
of him, Prince Andrew rode round the whole fortified camp and, by           
the aid of his own knowledge and by talks with experts, tried to            
form a definite opinion about it. But the question whether the camp         
was advantageous or disadvantageous remained for him undecided.             
Already from his military experience and what he had seen in the            
Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in war the            
most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all depends      
on the way unexpected movements of the enemy- that cannot be foreseen-      
are met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled. To             
clear up this last point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his          
position and acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the            
control of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he        
deduced for himself the following of the state of affairs.                  
  While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces had been            
divided into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly,          
secondly, the army under Bagration, and thirdly, the one commanded          
by Tormasov. The Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander      
in chief. In the orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor          
would take command, but only that he would be with the army. The            
Emperor, moreover, had with him not a commander in chief's staff but        
the imperial headquarters staff. In attendance on him was the head          
of the imperial staff, Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well      
as generals, imperial aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large      
number of foreigners, but not the army staff. Besides these, there          
were in attendance on the Emperor without any definite appointments:        
Arakcheev, the ex-Minister of War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general      
in rank; the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich; Count              
Rumyantsev, the Chancellor; Stein, a former Prussian minister;              
Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel, the chief author of the plan of         
campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general and Sardinian emigre;               
Wolzogen- and many others. Though these men had no military                 
appointment in the army, their position gave them influence, and often      
a corps commander, or even the commander in chief, did not know in          
what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke,               
Arakcheev, or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that advice and        
did not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice         
emanated from the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it        
had to be executed or not. But this was only the external condition;        
the essential significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all        
these people, from a courtier's point of view (and in an Emperor's          
vicinity all became courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this:         
the Emperor did not assume the title of commander in chief, but             
disposed of all the armies; the men around him were his assistants.         
Arakcheev was a faithful custodian to enforce order and acted as the        
sovereign's bodyguard. Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vilna                
province who appeared to be doing the honors of the district, but           
was in reality a good general, useful as an adviser and ready at            
hand to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke was there because it suited         
him to be. The ex-Minister Stein was there because his advice was           
useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high esteem personally.        
Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a general full of                
self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander.                
Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in speech. The           
adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the            
Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn        
up the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander      
to believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole            
business of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel's         
thoughts in a more comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a         
harsh, bookish theorist, self-confident to the point of despising           
everyone else) was able to do.                                              
  Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and              
unexpected ideas every day- especially the foreigners, who did so with      
a boldness characteristic of people employed in a country not their         
own- there were many secondary personages accompanying the army             
because their principals were there.                                        
  Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless,                  
brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following            
sharply defined subdivisions of and parties:                                
                                                      {BK9|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents- military            
theorists who believed in a science of war with immutable laws- laws        
of oblique movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his             
adherents demanded a retirement into the depths of the country in           
accordance with precise laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and         
they saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil intention in every              
deviation from that theory. To this party belonged the foreign nobles,      
Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and others, chiefly Germans.                       
  The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme,          
as always happens, was met by representatives of the other. The             
members of this party were those who had demanded an advance from           
Vilna into Poland and freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides           
being advocates of bold action, this section also represented               
nationalism, which made them still more one-sided in the dispute. They      
were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov (who was beginning to come to the         
front), and others. At that time a famous joke of Ermolov's was             
being circulated, that as a great favor he had petitioned the               
Emperor to make him a German. The men of that party, remembering            
Suvorov, said that what one had to do was not to reason, or stick pins      
into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep him out of Russia, and        
not let the army get discouraged.                                           
  To the third party- in which the Emperor had most confidence-             
belonged the courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the         
other two. The members of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom         
Arakcheev belonged, thought and said what men who have no                   
convictions but wish to seem to have some generally say. They said          
that undoubtedly war, particularly against such a genius as                 
Bonaparte (they called him Bonaparte now), needs most deeply devised        
plans and profound scientific knowledge and in that respect Pfuel           
was a genius, but at the same time it had to be acknowledged that           
the theorists are often one sided, and therefore one should not             
trust them absolutely, but should also listen to what Pfuel's               
opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had to say, and        
then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention of the          
camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel's plan, but on changing the              
movements of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim      
nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents        
of this third party.                                                        
  Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the           
Tsarevich, who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz,          
where he had ridden out at the head of the Guards, in his casque and        
cavalry uniform as to a review, expecting to crush the French               
gallantly; but unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had           
narrowly escaped amid the general confusion. The men of this party had      
both the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions. They        
feared Napoleon, recognized his strength and their own weakness, and        
frankly said so. They said: "Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin            
will come of all this! We have abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk and shall        
abandon Drissa. The only reasonable thing left to do is to conclude         
peace as soon as possible, before we are turned out of Petersburg."         
  This view was very general in the upper army circles and found            
support also in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyantsev, who,        
for other reasons of state, was in favor of peace.                          
                                                     {BK9|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay          
de Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of war and commander in      
chief. "Be he what he may" (they always began like that), "he is an         
honest, practical man and we have nobody better. Give him real              
power, for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of            
command, and he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If our      
army is well organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa               
without suffering any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If          
Barclay is now to be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for          
Bennigsen showed his incapacity already in 1807."                           
  The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at        
any rate there was no one more active and experienced than                  
Bennigsen: "and twist about as you may, you will have to come to            
Bennigsen eventually. Let the others make mistakes now!" said they,         
arguing that our retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse           
and an unbroken series of blunders. "The more mistakes that are made        
the better. It will at any rate be understood all the sooner that           
things cannot go on like this. What is wanted is not some Barclay or        
other, but a man like Bennigsen, who made his mark in 1807, and to          
whom Napoleon himself did justice- a man whose authority would be           
willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the only such man."                  
  The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always          
to be found, especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there          
were particularly many round Alexander- generals and imperial               
aides-de-camp passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a          
monarch but as a man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as         
Rostov had done in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues        
but all human capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with        
the sovereign for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for      
such excessive modesty, and only desired and insisted that their            
adored sovereign should abandon his diffidence and openly announce          
that he would place himself at the head of the army, gather round           
him a commander in chief's staff, and, consulting experienced               
theoreticians and practical men where necessary, would himself lead         
the troops, whose spirits would thereby be raised to the highest            
pitch.                                                                      
  The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to        
the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither      
peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa        
or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor        
Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing- as much advantage         
and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of          
conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied about the Emperor's      
headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at        
other times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative post           
would today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the           
day after, merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor,         
would declare that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who      
wished to gain some advantage would attract the Emperor's attention by      
loudly advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day          
before, and would dispute and shout at the council, beating his breast      
and challenging those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby          
proving that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good.      
A third, in the absence of opponents, between two councils would            
simply solicit a special gratuity for his faithful services, well           
knowing that at that moment people would be too busy to refuse him.         
A fourth while seemingly overwhelmed with work would often come             
accidentally under the Emperor's eye. A fifth, to achieve his               
long-cherished aim of dining with the Emperor, would stubbornly insist      
on the correctness or falsity of some newly emerging opinion and for        
this object would produce arguments more or less forcible and correct.      
  All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations,           
and promotions, and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of         
imperial favor, and directly they noticed it turning in any direction,      
this whole drone population of the army began blowing hard that way,        
so that it was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere.         
Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious          
danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid        
this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings,           
and the diversity of race among these people- this eighth and               
largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted         
great confusion and obscurity to the common task. Whatever question         
arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their               
buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum      
drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.       
                                                     {BK9|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached      
the army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning        
to raise its voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men        
experienced and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any          
of those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of         
what was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means        
of escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.            
  The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong                
resulted chiefly from the Emperor's presence in the army with his           
military court and from the consequent presence there of an                 
indefinite, conditional, and unsteady fluctuation of relations,             
which is in place at court but harmful in an army; that a sovereign         
should reign but not command the army, and that the only way out of         
the position would be for the Emperor and his court to leave the army;      
that the mere presence of the Emperor paralyzed the action of fifty         
thousand men required to secure his personal safety, and that the           
worst commander in chief if independent would be better than the            
very best one trammeled by the presence and authority of the monarch.       
  Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa,           
Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the chief                       
representatives of this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which          
Arakcheev and Balashev agreed to sign. In this letter, availing             
himself of permission given him by the Emperor to discuss the               
general course of affairs, he respectfully suggested- on the plea that      
it was necessary for the sovereign to arouse a warlike spirit in the        
people of the capital- that the Emperor should leave the army.              
  That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to            
them to defend their country- the very incitement which was the             
chief cause of Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the         
Tsar's personal presence in Moscow- was suggested to the Emperor,           
and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army.                    
                                                                            
BK9|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when                
Barclay, one day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that the sovereign           
wished to see him personally, to question him about Turkey, and that        
Prince Andrew was to present himself at Bennigsen's quarters at six         
that evening.                                                               
  News was received at the Emperor's quarters that very day of a fresh      
movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army- news                    
subsequently found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had        
ridden round the Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had             
pointed out to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel,           
and till then considered a chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which          
would ensure Napoleon's destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the      
destruction of the Russian army.                                            
  Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen's quarters- a country gentleman's      
house of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river.            
Neither Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the            
Emperor's aide-de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the        
Emperor, accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had         
gone a second time that day to inspect the fortifications of the            
Drissa camp, of the suitability of which serious doubts were beginning      
to be felt.                                                                 
  Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French        
novel in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was      
still an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one              
corner stood the folding bedstead of Bennigsen's adjutant. This             
adjutant was also there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding,            
evidently exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led from the          
room, one straight on into what had been the drawing room, and              
another, on the right, to the study. Through the first door came the        
sound of voices conversing in German and occasionally in French. In         
that drawing room were gathered, by the Emperor's wish, not a military      
council (the Emperor preferred indefiniteness), but certain persons         
whose opinions he wished to know in view of the impending                   
difficulties. It was not a council of war, but, as it were, a               
council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor personally.          
To this semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General Armfeldt,          
Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had referred        
to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein who was        
not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince Andrew         
had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew had        
an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon        
after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a        
minute to speak to Chernyshev.                                              
  At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general,      
which fitted him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince      
Andrew, though he saw him now for the first time. There was about           
him something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German        
theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more      
typical than any of them. Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German         
theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united        
to such an extent.                                                          
                                                     {BK9|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust          
build, broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face      
was much wrinkled and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been        
hastily brushed smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in      
quaint little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly and            
angrily around, as if afraid of everything in that large apartment.         
Awkwardly holding up his sword, he addressed Chernyshev and asked in        
German where the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass          
through the rooms as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and          
greetings, and sit down to business in front of a map, where he             
would feel at home. He nodded hurriedly in reply to Chernyshev, and         
smiled ironically on hearing that the sovereign was inspecting the          
fortifications that he, Pfuel, had planned in accord with his               
theory. He muttered something to himself abruptly and in a bass voice,      
as self-assured Germans do- it might have been "stupid fellow"... or        
"the whole affair will be ruined," or "something absurd will come of        
it."... Prince Andrew did not catch what he said and would have passed      
on, but Chernyshev introduced him to Pfuel, remarking that Prince           
Andrew was just back from Turkey where the war had terminated so            
fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced- not so much at Prince Andrew as          
past him- and said, with a laugh: "That must have been a fine tactical      
war"; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the room from which        
the sound of voices was heard.                                              
  Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly        
disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to            
inspect and criticize his camp in his absence. From this short              
interview with Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz               
experiences, was able to form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was      
one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men,                   
self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are,               
because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract         
notion- science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth.         
A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally,          
both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An      
Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized        
state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what        
he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is                 
undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is               
excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is         
self-assured just because he knows nothing does not want to know            
anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The         
German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive        
than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth-                
science- which he himself has invented but which is for him the             
absolute truth.                                                             
  Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science- the theory of         
oblique movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the          
Great's wars, and all he came across in the history of more recent          
warfare seemed to him absurd and barbarous- monstrous collisions in         
which so many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars         
could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and          
therefore could not serve as material for science.                          
  In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of          
campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he did not see the           
least proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of            
that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were,        
in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with              
characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, "There, I said the      
whole affair would go to the devil!" Pfuel was one of those                 
theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the          
theory's object- its practical application. His love of theory made         
him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was        
even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in         
practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his             
theory.                                                                     
  He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev about the             
present war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all            
will go wrong, and who is not displeased that it should be so. The          
unbrushed tufts of hair sticking up behind and the hastily brushed          
hair on his temples expressed this most eloquently.                         
                                                    {BK9|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of           
his voice were at once heard from there.                                    
                                                                            
BK9|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew's eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when      
Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkonski, but not        
pausing, went into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as        
he went. The Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened          
on to make some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign.      
Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch, where the             
Emperor, who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was         
talking to him with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head        
bent to the left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor        
moved forward evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the            
flushed and excited Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and         
continued to speak.                                                         
  "And as for the man who advised forming this camp- the Drissa camp,"      
said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince         
Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..."            
continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain              
himself, "the man who advised the Drissa camp- I see no alternative         
but the lunatic asylum or the gallows!"                                     
  Without heeding the end of the Italian's remarks, and as though           
not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkonski, addressed him         
graciously.                                                                 
  "I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting,           
and wait for me."                                                           
  The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter          
Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind          
them. Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor's permission,          
accompanied Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing         
room where the council was assembled.                                       
                                                     {BK9|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the position, as it          
were, of chief of the Emperor's staff. He came out of the study into        
the drawing room with some maps which he spread on a table, and put         
questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen           
present. What had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to        
be false) had been received during the night of a movement by the           
French to outflank the Drissa camp.                                         
  The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the                  
difficulty that presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly         
new position away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for      
this was inexplicable (unless he wished to show that he, too, could         
have an opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should           
unite and there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had             
thought out that plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to          
answer the questions put- which, in fact, his plan did not answer-          
as to avail himself of the opportunity to air it. It was one of the         
millions of proposals, one as good as another, that could be made as        
long as it was quite unknown what character the war would take. Some        
disputed his arguments, others defended them. Young Count Toll              
objected to the Swedish general's views more warmly than anyone             
else, and in the course of the dispute drew from his side pocket a          
well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to read to them. In         
these voluminous notes Toll suggested another scheme, totally               
different from Armfeldt's or Pfuel's plan of campaign. In answer to         
Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack, which, he urged,         
could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the          
trap (as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.              
  During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen          
(his "bridge" in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted          
contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean          
himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when         
Prince Volkonski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his           
opinion, he merely said:                                                    
  "Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position            
with an exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman's attack- very      
fine, or a retreat, also good! Why ask me?" said he. "Why, you              
yourselves know everything better than I do."                               
  But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in the                 
Emperor's name that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly          
growing animated, began to speak:                                           
                                                    {BK9|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  "Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody               
thought they knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How            
mend matters? There is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me      
must be strictly adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with           
his bony fingers. "What is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!"         
  He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no          
eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that             
everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really             
going to outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed.              
  Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in               
French. Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French      
badly, and began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with         
Pfuel, who was rapidly demonstrating that not only all that had             
happened, but all that could happen, had been foreseen in his               
scheme, and that if there were now any difficulties the whole fault         
lay in the fact that his plan had not been precisely executed. He kept      
laughing sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last contemptuously         
ceased to demonstrate, like a mathematician who ceases to prove in          
various ways the accuracy of a problem that has already been proved.        
Wolzogen took his place and continued to explain his views in               
French, every now and then turning to Pfuel and saying, "Is it not so,      
your excellency?" But Pfuel, like a man heated in a fight who               
strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at his own supporter,        
Wolzogen:                                                                   
  "Well, of course, what more is there to explain?"                         
  Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in             
French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to               
Volkonski in Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.       
                                                    {BK9|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry,        
determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those             
present, evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself,           
nursed no hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan,            
formed on a theory arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out.      
He was ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired          
involuntary respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides           
this, the remarks of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had         
not been noticeable at the council of war in 1805: there was now a          
panic fear of Napoleon's genius, which, though concealed, was               
noticeable in every rejoinder. Everything was assumed to be possible        
for Napoleon, they expected him from every side, and invoked his            
terrible name to shatter each other's proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to      
consider Napoleon a barbarian like everyone else who opposed his            
theory. But besides this feeling of respect, Pfuel evoked pity in           
Prince Andrew. From the tone in which the courtiers addressed him           
and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of him to the             
Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in Pfuel's own            
expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel himself           
felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence and        
grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly               
brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he           
concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was          
evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his        
theory by a huge experiment and proving its soundness to the whole          
world was slipping away from him.                                           
  The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted         
the more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and              
personalities, and the less was it possible to arrive at any general        
conclusion from all that had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to         
this polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and           
shouts, felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought      
that had long since and often occurred to him during his military           
activities- the idea that there is not and cannot be any science of         
war, and that therefore there can be no such thing as a military            
genius- now appeared to him an obvious truth. "What theory and science      
is possible about a matter the conditions and circumstances of which        
are unknown and cannot be defined, especially when the strength of the      
acting forces cannot be ascertained? No one was or is able to               
foresee in what condition our or the enemy's armies will be in a day's      
time, and no one can gauge the force of this or that detachment.            
Sometimes- when there is not a coward at the front to shout, 'We are        
cut off!' and start running, but a brave and jolly lad who shouts,          
'Hurrah!'- a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand,          
as at Schon Grabern, while at times fifty thousand run from eight           
thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a matter in        
which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined and              
everything depends on innumerable conditions, the significance of           
which is determined at a particular moment which arrives no one             
knows when? Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci says        
we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud says that the        
worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it,        
and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes         
one plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and the      
advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial.      
And why do they all speak of a 'military genius'? Is a man a genius         
who can order bread to be brought up at the right time and say who          
is to go to the right and who to the left? It is only because military      
men are invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter      
power, attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess.           
The best generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or             
absent-minded men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted        
that. And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied      
face on the field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander        
not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence        
of the highest and best human attributes- love, poetry, tenderness,         
and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly               
convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will        
not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave             
leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity,          
or think of what is just and unjust. It is understandable that a            
theory of their 'genius' was invented for them long ago because they        
have power! The success of a military action depends not on them,           
but on the man in the ranks who shouts, 'We are lost!' or who               
shouts, 'Hurrah!' And only in the ranks can one serve with assurance        
of being useful."                                                           
  So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he            
roused himself only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving.      
  At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he           
would like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court           
circles forever by not asking to remain attached to the sovereign's         
person, but for permission to serve in the army.                            
                                                                            
BK9|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had received a letter        
from his parents in which they told him briefly of Natasha's illness        
and the breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they         
explained by Natasha's having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas        
to retire from the army and return home. On receiving this letter,          
Nicholas did not even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to        
retire from the army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry            
Natasha was ill and her engagement broken off, and that he would do         
all he could to meet their wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately.            
  "Adored friend of my soul!" he wrote. "Nothing but honor could            
keep me from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of      
the campaign, I should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades'            
eyes but in my own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and          
duty to the Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation. Believe      
me, directly the war is over, if I am still alive and still loved by        
you, I will throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever        
to my ardent breast."                                                       
  It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that               
prevented Rostov from returning home as he had promised and marrying        
Sonya. The autumn in Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with         
the Christmas holidays and Sonya's love, had opened out to him a vista      
of tranquil rural joys and peace such as he had never known before,         
and which now allured him. "A splendid wife, children, a good pack          
of hounds, a dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors,        
service by election..." thought he. But now the campaign was                
beginning, and he had to remain with his regiment. And since it had to      
be so, Nicholas Rostov, as was natural to him, felt contented with the      
life he led in the regiment and was able to find pleasure in that           
life.                                                                       
  On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully            
welcomed by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back      
from the Ukraine excellent horses which pleased him and earned him          
commendation from his commanders. During his absence he had been            
promoted captain, and when the regiment was put on war footing with an      
increase in numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron.                
  The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double          
pay, new officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody      
was infected with the merrily excited mood that goes with the               
commencement of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous            
position in the regiment, devoted himself entirely to the pleasures         
and interests of military service, though he knew that sooner or later      
he would have to relinquish them.                                           
                                                     {BK9|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated reasons of          
state, political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was                
accompanied by a complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and         
passions at headquarters. For the Pavlograd hussars, however, the           
whole of this retreat during the finest period of summer and with           
sufficient supplies was a very simple and agreeable business.               
  It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness,        
and intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves         
where they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat,          
it was only because they had to leave billets they had grown                
accustomed to, or some pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that        
things looked bad chanced to enter anyone's head, he tried to be as         
cheerful as befits a good soldier and not to think of the general           
trend of affairs, but only of the task nearest to hand. First they          
camped gaily before Vilna, making acquaintance with the Polish              
landowners, preparing for reviews and being reviewed by the Emperor         
and other high commanders. Then came an order to retreat to Sventsyani      
and destroy any provisions they could not carry away with them.             
Sventsyani was remembered by the hussars only as the drunken camp, a        
name the whole army gave to their encampment there, and because many        
complaints were made against the troops, who, taking advantage of           
the order to collect provisions, took also horses, carriages, and           
carpets from the Polish proprietors. Rostov remembered Sventsyani,          
because on the first day of their arrival at that small town he             
changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the drunken         
men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five barrels      
of old beer. From Sventsyani they retired farther and farther to            
Drissa, and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier        
of Russia proper.                                                           
  On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a serious           
action for the first time.                                                  
  On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy      
storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 18l2 was                  
remarkable for its storms.                                                  
  The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye,           
which was already in ear but had been completely trodden down by            
cattle and horses. The rain was descending in torrents, and Rostov,         
with a young officer named Ilyin, his protege, was sitting in a             
hastily constructed shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long        
mustaches extending onto his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had      
been overtaken by the rain, entered Rostov's shelter.                       
                                                    {BK9|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  "I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raevski's           
exploit?"                                                                   
  And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle, which he        
had heard at the staff.                                                     
  Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water          
trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional          
glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close to him. This officer, a lad of      
sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same           
relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denisov seven years          
before. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and adored him          
as a girl might have done.                                                  
  Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke                     
grandiloquently of the Saltanov dam being "a Russian Thermopylae," and      
of how a deed worthy of antiquity had been performed by General             
Raevski. He recounted how Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam         
under terrific fire and had charged with them beside him. Rostov heard      
the story and not only said nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski's               
enthusiasm but, on the contrary, looked like a man ashamed of what          
he was hearing, though with no intention of contradicting it. Since         
the campaigns of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that      
men always lie when describing military exploits, as he himself had         
done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to        
know that nothing happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate         
it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski's tale, nor did he like               
Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches extending over his               
cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and         
crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at him in                
silence. "In the first place, there must have been such a confusion         
and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raevski did         
lead his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on          
some dozen men nearest to him," thought he, "the rest could not have        
seen how or with whom Raevski came onto the dam. And even those who         
did see it would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had          
they to do with Raevski's tender paternal feelings when their own           
skins were in danger? And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did           
not depend on whether they took the Saltanov dam or not, as we are          
told was the case at Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a         
sacrifice? And why expose his own children in the battle? I would           
not have taken my brother Petya there, or even Ilyin, who's a stranger      
to me but a nice lad, but would have tried to put them somewhere under      
cover," Nicholas continued to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But      
he did not express his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had           
gained experience. He knew that this tale redounded to the glory of         
our arms and so one had to pretend not to doubt it. And he acted            
accordingly.                                                                
  "I can't stand this any more," said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov           
did not relish Zdrzhinski's conversation. "My stockings and shirt...        
and the water is running on my seat! I'll go and look for shelter. The      
rain seems less heavy."                                                     
                                                    {BK9|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
  Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.                                  
  Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud, came running         
back to the shanty.                                                         
  "Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I've found it! About two hundred             
yards away there's a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can        
at least get dry there, and Mary Hendrikhovna's there."                     
  Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty         
young German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether            
from lack of means or because he did not like to part from his young        
wife in the early days of their marriage, took her about with him           
wherever the hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a             
standing joke among the hussar officers.                                    
  Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to        
follow with the things, and- now slipping in the mud, now splashing         
right through it- set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the          
darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.                   
                                                    {BK9|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "Rostov, where are you?"                                                  
  "Here. What lightning!" they called to one another.                       
                                                                            
BK9|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  In the tavern, before which stood the doctor's covered cart, there        
were already some five officers. Mary Hendrikhovna, a plump little          
blonde German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a          
broad bench in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep        
behind her. Rostov and Ilyin, on entering the room, were welcomed with      
merry shouts and laughter.                                                  
  "Dear me, how jolly we are!" said Rostov laughing.                        
  "And why do you stand there gaping?"                                      
  "What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don't            
make our drawing room so wet."                                              
  "Don't mess Mary Hendrikhovna's dress!" cried other voices.               
                                                     {BK9|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they could change        
into dry clothes without offending Mary Hendrikhovna's modesty. They        
were going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but             
found it completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards          
by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these                
officers would on no account yield their position. Mary Hendrikhovna        
obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and      
behind that screen Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had            
brought their kits, changed their wet things for dry ones.                  
  A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was            
found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small          
samovar was produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and           
having asked Mary Hendrikhovna to preside, they all crowded round her.      
One offered her a clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands,            
another spread a jacket under her little feet to keep them from the         
damp, another hung his coat over the window to keep out the draft, and      
yet another waved the flies off her husband's face, lest he should          
wake up.                                                                    
  "Leave him alone," said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling timidly and            
happily. "He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night."           
  "Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna," replied the officer, "one must look          
after the doctor. Perhaps he'll take pity on me someday, when it comes      
to cutting off a leg or an arm for me."                                     
  There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one           
could not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar      
held only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter        
to take turns in order of seniority to receive one's tumbler from Mary      
Hendrikhovna's plump little hands with their short and not overclean        
nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love            
with her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition        
soon left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the          
general mood of courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself             
surrounded by such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with              
satisfaction, try as she might to hide it, and perturbed as she             
evidently was each time her husband moved in his sleep behind her.          
                                                    {BK9|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything          
else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary         
Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostov             
received his tumbler, and adding some rum to it asked Mary                  
Hendrikhovna to stir it.                                                    
  "But you take it without sugar?" she said, smiling all the time,          
as if everything she said and everything the others said was very           
amusing and had a double meaning.                                           
  "It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should        
stir my tea."                                                               
  Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which          
someone meanwhile had pounced on.                                           
  "Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still nicer," said        
Rostov.                                                                     
                                                    {BK9|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "Too hot!" she replied, blushing with pleasure.                           
  Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it      
to Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.                
  "This is my cup," said he. "Only dip your finger in it and I'll           
drink it all up."                                                           
  When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a pack of cards and        
proposed that they should play "Kings" with Mary Hendrikhovna. They         
drew lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostov's suggestion      
it was agreed that whoever became "King" should have the right to kiss      
Mary Hendrikhovna's hand, and that the "Booby" should go to refill and      
reheat the samovar for the doctor when the latter awoke.                    
  "Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is 'King'?" asked Ilyin.           
                                                    {BK9|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!"                            
  They had hardly begun to play before the doctor's disheveled head         
suddenly appeared from behind Mary Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for      
some time, listening to what was being said, and evidently found            
nothing entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad      
and depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched himself and      
asked to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon          
as he had left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter           
and Mary Hendrikhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears and           
thereby became still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard,      
the doctor told his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and           
looked at him in alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had            
ceased and they must go to sleep in their covered cart, or                  
everything in it would be stolen.                                           
  "But I'll send an orderly.... Two of them!" said Rostov. "What an         
idea, doctor!"                                                              
  "I'll stand guard on it myself!" said Ilyin.                              
  "No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for         
two nights," replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his        
wife, waiting for the game to end.                                          
                                                    {BK9|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers            
grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from                 
laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When          
he had gone, taking his wife with him, and had settled down with her        
in their covered cart, the officers lay down in the tavern, covering        
themselves with their wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long         
time; now they exchanged remarks, recalling the doctor's uneasiness         
and his wife's delight, now they ran out into the porch and reported        
what was taking place in the covered trap. Several times Rostov,            
covering his head, tried to go to sleep, but some remark would              
arouse him and conversation would be resumed, to the accompaniment          
of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.                                  
                                                                            
BK9|CH14                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  It was nearly three o'clock but no one was yet asleep, when the           
quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the little town          
of Ostrovna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began                 
hurriedly getting ready and again boiled again boiled some muddy water      
in the samovar. But Rostov went off to his squadron without waiting         
for tea. Day was breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were         
dispersing. It felt damp and cold, especially in clothes that were          
still moist. As they left the tavern in the twilight of the dawn,           
Rostov and Ilyin both glanced under the wet and glistening leather          
hood of the doctor's cart, from under the apron of which his feet were      
sticking out, and in the middle of which his wife's nightcap was            
visible and her sleepy breathing audible.                                   
  "She really is a dear little thing," said Rostov to Ilyin, who was        
following him.                                                              
  "A charming woman!" said Ilyin, with all the gravity of a boy of          
sixteen.                                                                    
  Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The             
command was heard to "mount" and the soldiers crossed themselves and        
mounted. Rostov riding in front gave the order "Forward!" and the           
hussars, with clanking sabers and subdued talk, their horses' hoofs         
splashing in the mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad            
road planted with birch trees on each side, following the infantry and      
a battery that had gone on in front.                                        
  Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding        
before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly             
grass which always grows by country roadsides became clearly                
visible, still wet with the night's rain; the drooping branches of the      
birches, also wet, swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of        
water to one side. The soldiers' faces were more and more clearly           
visible. Rostov, always closely followed by Ilyin, rode along the side      
of the road between two rows of birch trees.                                
                                                     {BK9|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding         
not a regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a               
sportsman, he had lately procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome,        
Donets horse, dun-colored, with light mane and tail, and when he            
rode it no one could outgallop him. To ride this horse was a                
pleasure to him, and he thought of the horse, of the morning, of the        
doctor's wife, but not once of the impending danger.                        
  Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt afraid; now he had      
not the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had          
grown used to being under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but        
because he had learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He        
had grown accustomed when going into action to think about anything         
but what would seem most likely to interest him- the impending danger.      
During the first period of his service, hard as he tried and much as        
he reproached himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this,      
but with time it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under         
the birch trees, occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met        
his hand, sometimes touching his horse's side with his foot, or,            
without turning round, handing a pipe he had finished to an hussar          
riding behind him, with as calm and careless an air as though he            
were merely out for a ride. He glanced with pity at the excited face        
of Ilyin, who talked much and in great agitation. He knew from              
experience the tormenting expectation of terror and death the cornet        
was suffering and knew that only time could help him.                       
  As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the           
clouds, the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the           
summer morning after the storm; drops still continued to fall, but          
vertically now, and all was still. The whole sun appeared on the            
horizon and disappeared behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it.      
A few minutes later it reappeared brighter still from behind the top        
of the cloud, tearing its edge. Everything grew bright and                  
glittered. And with that light, and as if in reply to it, came the          
sound of guns ahead of them.                                                
  Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine the distance of      
that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy's adjutant came galloping from         
Vitebsk with orders to advance at a trot along the road.                    
  The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery- which      
had also quickened their pace- rode down a hill, and passing through        
an empty and deserted village again ascended. The horses began to           
lather and the men to flush.                                                
                                                    {BK9|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  "Halt! Dress your ranks!" the order of the regimental commander           
was heard ahead. "Forward by the left. Walk, march!" came the order         
from in front.                                                              
  And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left             
flank of our position, halted behind our Uhlans who were in the             
front line. To the right stood our infantry in a dense column: they         
were the reserve. Higher up the hill, on the very horizon, our guns         
were visible through the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated        
by slanting morning sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be      
seen the enemy's columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in            
action, could be heard briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in           
the dale.                                                                   
  At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov's spirits rose, as at the           
strains of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots,           
now together, now several quickly one after another. Again all was          
silent and then again it sounded as if someone were walking on              
detonators and exploding them.                                              
  The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A               
cannonade began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the          
squadron, halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode          
up the hill to the guns.                                                    
  After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the Uhlans.               
                                                    {BK9|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  "Form column! Prepare to charge!"                                         
  The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the           
cavalry to pass. The Uhlans started, the streamers on their spears          
fluttering, and trotted downhill toward the French cavalry which was        
seen below to the left.                                                     
  As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered        
up the hill to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by      
the Uhlans, bullets came from the front, whining and whistling, but         
fell spent without taking effect.                                           
  The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more          
pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov than the previous sounds      
of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening        
out before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the          
movement of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French               
dragoons, something confused happened there amid the smoke, and five        
minutes later our Uhlans were galloping back, not to the place they         
had occupied but more to the left, and among the orange-colored Uhlans      
on chestnut horses and behind them, in a large group, blue French           
dragoons on gray horses could be seen.                                      
                                                                            
BK9|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Rostov, with his keen sportsman's eye, was one of the first to catch      
sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our Uhlans. Nearer and         
nearer in disorderly crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons         
pursuing them. He could already see how these men, who looked so small      
at the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving           
their arms and their sabers in the air.                                     
  Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He            
felt instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons        
now, the latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be         
made it must be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too           
late. He looked around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing          
like himself with eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.                     
  "Andrew Sevastyanych!" said Rostov. "You know, we could crush             
them...."                                                                   
  "A fine thing too!" replied the captain, "and really..."                  
  Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped      
to the front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish              
giving the word of command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling,        
was following him. Rostov himself did not know how or why he did it.        
He acted as he did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He      
saw the dragoons near and that they were galloping in disorder; he          
knew they could not withstand an attack- knew there was only that           
moment and that if he let it slip it would not return. The bullets          
were whining and whistling so stimulatingly around him and his horse        
was so eager to go that he could not restrain himself. He touched           
his horse, gave the word of command, and immediately, hearing behind        
him the tramp of the horses of his deployed squadron, rode at full          
trot downhill toward the dragoons. Hardly had they reached the              
bottom of the hill before their pace instinctively changed to a             
gallop, which grew faster and faster as they drew nearer to our Uhlans      
and the French dragoons who galloped after them. The dragoons were now      
close at hand. On seeing the hussars, the foremost began to turn,           
while those behind began to halt. With the same feeling with which          
he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov gave rein to his          
Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path of the dragoons'            
disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot flung          
himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless          
horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were        
galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed             
after him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared        
it, and almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that      
he would immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That               
Frenchman, by his uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching      
on his gray horse and urging it on with his saber. In another moment        
Rostov's horse dashed its breast against the hindquarters of the            
officer's horse, almost knocking it over, and at the same instant           
Rostov, without knowing why, raised his saber and struck the Frenchman      
with it.                                                                    
                                                     {BK9|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  The instant he had done this, all Rostov's animation vanished. The        
officer fell, not so much from the blow- which had but slightly cut         
his arm above the elbow- as from the shock to his horse and from            
fright. Rostov reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see      
whom he had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with         
one foot on the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His          
eyes, screwed up with fear as if he every moment expected another           
blow, gazed up at Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale and                
mud-stained face- fair and young, with a dimple in the chin and             
light-blue eyes- was not an enemy's face at all suited to a                 
battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face. Before Rostov had          
decided what to do with him, the officer cried, "I surrender!" He           
hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the stirrup and           
did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostov's face. Some            
hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the         
saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was      
wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his         
horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round          
him; a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In           
front, the French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars             
galloped hastily back with their prisoners. Rostov galloped back            
with the rest, aware of an unpleasant feeling of depression in his          
heart. Something vague and confused, which he could not at all account      
for, had come over him with the capture of that officer and the blow        
he had dealt him.                                                           
  Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars, sent for               
Rostov, thanked him, and said he would report his gallant deed to           
the Emperor and would recommend him for a St. George's Cross. When          
sent for by Count Ostermann, Rostov, remembering that he had charged        
without orders, felt sure his commander was sending for him to              
punish him for breach of discipline. Ostermann's flattering words           
and promise of a reward should therefore have struck him all the            
more pleasantly, but he still felt that same vaguely disagreeable           
feeling of moral nausea. "But what on earth is worrying me?" he             
asked himself as he rode back from the general. "Ilyin? No, he's safe.      
Have I disgraced myself in any way? No, that's not it." Something           
else, resembling remorse, tormented him. "Yes, oh yes, that French          
officer with the dimple. And I remember how my arm paused when I            
raised it."                                                                 
  Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to        
have a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was            
sitting in his foreign uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked            
anxiously about him; The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called      
a wound. He glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his            
hand in greeting. Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as          
of shame.                                                                   
  All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that           
Rostov, without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and            
preoccupied. He drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept          
turning something over in his mind.                                         
  Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his,           
which to his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and            
even given him a reputation for bravery, and there was something he         
could not at all understand. "So others are even more afraid than I         
am!" he thought. "So that's all there is in what is called heroism!         
And heroism! And did I do it for my country's sake? And how was he          
to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He      
thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand              
trembled. And they have given me a St. George's Cross.... I can't make      
it out at all."                                                             
                                                    {BK9|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could        
reach no clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune        
in the service, as often happens, turned in his favor. After the            
affair at Ostrovna he was brought into notice, received command of          
an hussar battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he was             
chosen.                                                                     
                                                                            
BK9|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  On receiving news of Natasha's illness, the countess, though not          
quite well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Petya and the            
rest of the household, and the whole family moved from Marya                
Dmitrievna's house to their own and settled down in town.                   
  Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for        
her parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness, her      
conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the            
background. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider      
in how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat        
or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them      
feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how to            
help her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked        
much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and                  
prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known          
to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they        
could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease        
suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his        
own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel,         
complicated disease, unknown to medicine- not a disease of the              
lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical           
books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations      
of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur        
to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to         
work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure,           
and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their        
lives on that business. But, above all, that thought was kept out of        
their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful, as in        
fact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their usefulness did not         
depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part           
harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they were given in           
small doses), but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable            
because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of those who        
loved her- and that is why there are, and always will be,                   
pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They                 
satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy,         
and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are           
suffering. They satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form in      
a child, when it wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A         
child knocks itself and runs at once to the arms of its mother or           
nurse to have the aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better         
when this is done. The child cannot believe that the strongest and          
wisest of its people have no remedy for its pain, and the hope of           
relief and the expression of its mother's sympathy while she rubs           
the bump comforts it. The doctors were of use to Natasha because            
they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soon            
pass if only the coachman went to the chemist's in the Arbat and got a      
powder and some pills in a pretty box of a ruble and seventy kopeks,        
and if she took those powders in boiled water at intervals of               
precisely two hours, neither more nor less.                                 
  What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how would          
they have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been           
those pills to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken              
cutlets, and all the other details of life ordered by the doctors, the      
carrying out of which supplied an occupation and consolation to the         
family circle? How would the count have borne his dearly loved              
daughter's illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousand      
rubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to benefit her, or      
had he not known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yet      
other thousands and would take her abroad for consultations there, and      
had he not been able to explain the details of how Metivier and Feller      
had not understood the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov had              
diagnosed them even better? What would the countess have done had           
she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not strictly           
obeying the doctor's orders?                                                
  "You'll never get well like that," she would say, forgetting her          
grief in her vexation, "if you won't obey the doctor and take your          
medicine at the right time! You mustn't trifle with it, you know, or        
it may turn to pneumonia," she would go on, deriving much comfort from      
the utterance of that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as well      
as to herself.                                                              
  What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she        
had not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be             
ready to carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, and         
that she still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time        
when the slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be            
administered? Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so        
many sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that she had      
to take medicine at certain hours, though she declared that no              
medicine would cure her and that it was all nonsense. And it was            
even pleasant to be able to show, by disregarding the orders, that she      
did not believe in medical treatment and did not value her life.            
                                                     {BK9|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and      
regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he           
had gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followed        
him, he assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said          
that though there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this            
last medicine and one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly        
mental, but... And the countess, trying to conceal the action from          
herself and from him, slipped a gold coin into his hand and always          
returned to the patient with a more tranquil mind.                          
  The symptoms of Natasha's illness were that she ate little, slept         
little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that         
she could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in         
the stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move to        
the country that summer of 1812.                                            
  In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders        
out of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was          
fond of such things made a large collection, and in spite of being          
deprived of the country life to which she was accustomed, youth             
prevailed. Natasha's grief began to be overlaid by the impressions          
of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it             
gradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically.         
                                                                            
BK9|CH17                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all             
external forms of pleasure- balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters-      
but she never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She         
could not sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by          
herself, tears choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection      
of those pure times which could never return, tears of vexation that        
she should so uselessly have ruined her young life which might have         
been so happy. Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a      
blasphemy, in face of her sorrow. Without any need of                       
self-restraint, no wish to coquet ever entered her head. She said           
and felt at that time that no man was more to her than Nastasya             
Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood sentinel within her and forbade      
her every joy. Besides, she had lost all the old interests of her           
carefree girlish life that had been so full of hope. The previous           
autumn, the hunting, "Uncle," and the Christmas holidays spent with         
Nicholas at Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest and most               
painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a single        
day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at the          
time had not deceived her- that that state of freedom and readiness         
for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live      
on.                                                                         
  It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had            
formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the          
world. But this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself,           
"What next?" But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in             
life, yet life was passing. Natasha apparently tried not to be a            
burden or a hindrance to anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She        
kept away from everyone in the house and felt at ease only with her         
brother Petya. She liked to be with him better than with the others,        
and when alone with him she sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left         
the house and of those who came to see them was glad to see only one        
person, Pierre. It would have been impossible to treat her with more        
delicacy, greater care, and at the same time more seriously than did        
Count Bezukhov. Natasha unconsciously felt this delicacy and so             
found great pleasure in his society. But she was not even grateful          
to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an         
effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there      
was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natasha noticed                     
embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,                  
especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared          
that something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her.      
She noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and              
shyness, which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was      
to her. After those involuntary words- that if he were free he would        
have asked on his knees for her hand and her love- uttered at a moment      
when she was so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natasha of         
his feelings; and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had        
then so comforted her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words        
are spoken to comfort a crying child. It was not because Pierre was         
a married man, but because Natasha felt very strongly with him that         
moral barrier the absence of which she had experienced with Kuragin         
that it never entered her head that the relations between him and           
herself could lead to love on her part, still less on his, or even          
to the kind of tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a        
man and a woman of which she had known several instances.                   
  Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna Belova, a      
country neighbor of the Rostovs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions        
at the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natasha should      
fast and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha gladly welcomed the        
idea. Despite the doctor's orders that she should not go out early          
in the morning, Natasha insisted on fasting and preparing for the           
sacrament, not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostov              
family by attending three services in their own house, but as Agrafena      
Ivanovna did, by going to church every day for a week and not once          
missing Vespers, Matins, or Mass.                                           
  The countess was pleased with Natasha's zeal; after the poor results      
of the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that         
prayer might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not          
without fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to               
Natasha's wish and entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna used          
to come to wake Natasha at three in the morning, but generally found        
her already awake. She was afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily         
washing, and meekly putting on her shabbiest dress and an old               
mantilla, Natasha, shivering in the fresh air, went out into the            
deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn. By Agrafena                
Ivanovna's advice Natasha prepared herself not in their own parish,         
but at a church where, according to the devout Agrafena Ivanovna,           
the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were never        
many people in the church; Natasha always stood beside Belova in the        
customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the          
screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her,        
of humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her         
when at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the           
Virgin illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning      
light falling from the window, she listened to the words of the             
service which she tried to follow with understanding. When she              
understood them her personal feeling became interwoven in the               
prayers with shades of its own. When she did not understand, it was         
sweeter still to think that the wish to understand everything is            
pride, that it is impossible to understand all, that it is only             
necessary to believe and to commit oneself to God, whom she felt            
guiding her soul at those moments. She crossed herself, bowed low, and      
when she did not understand, in horror at her own vileness, simply          
asked God to forgive her everything, everything, to have mercy upon         
her. The prayers to which she surrendered herself most of all were          
those of repentance. On her way home at an early hour when she met          
no one but bricklayers going to work or men sweeping the street, and        
everybody within the houses was still asleep, Natasha experienced a         
feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility of correcting her            
faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness.             
  During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every      
day. And the happiness of taking communion, or "communing" as Agrafena      
Ivanovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natasha      
so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.      
                                                     {BK9|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                                       
                                                                            
BK9|CH18                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the      
war began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the             
Emperor to the people, and of his coming himself from the army to           
Moscow. And as up to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had        
been received, exaggerated reports became current about them and about      
the position of Russia. It was said that the Emperor was leaving the        
army because it was in danger, it was said that Smolensk had                
surrendered, that Napoleon had an army of a million and only a miracle      
could save Russia.                                                          
  On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was            
received but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the               
Rostovs', promised to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a          
copy of the manifesto and appeal, which he would obtain from Count          
Rostopchin.                                                                 
  That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis' private         
chapel as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o'clock, when           
the Rostovs got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air,        
the shouts of hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the              
crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of        
the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the      
rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot              
sunshine were all full of that summer languor, that content and             
discontent with the present, which is most strongly felt on a               
bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow notabilities, all the Rostovs'      
acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis' chapel, for, as if expecting        
something to happen, many wealthy families who usually left town for        
their country estates had not gone away that summer. As Natasha, at         
her mother's side, passed through the crowd behind a liveried               
footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a young man speaking        
about her in too loud a whisper.                                            
  "That's Rostova, the one who..."                                          
  "She's much thinner, but all the same she's pretty!"                      
                                                     {BK9|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonski.      
But she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that             
everyone who looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to        
her. With a sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she          
found herself in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with      
black lace walked- as women can walk- with the more repose and              
stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul. She knew for        
certain that she was pretty, but this no longer gave her                    
satisfaction as it used to. On the contrary it tormented her more than      
anything else of late, and particularly so on this bright, hot              
summer day in town. "It's Sunday again- another week past," she             
thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday before, "and           
always the same life that is no life, and the same surroundings in          
which it used to be so easy to live. I'm pretty, I'm young, and I know      
that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good," she        
thought, "but yet my best years are slipping by and are no good to          
anyone." She stood by her mother's side and exchanged nods with             
acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies'              
dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not      
crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she            
thought with vexation that she was herself being judged and was             
judging others, and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt         
horrified at her own vileness, horrified that the former purity of her      
soul was again lost to her.                                                 
  A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that      
mild solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the         
souls of the worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were             
closed, the curtain was slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft             
mysterious voice pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which           
she herself did not understand, made Natasha's breast heave, and a          
joyous but oppressive feeling agitated her.                                 
  "Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good      
forever, forever!" she pleaded.                                             
  The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen         
and, holding his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his          
dalmatic and, making the sign of the cross on his breast, began in a        
loud and solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer...                  
  "In peace let us pray unto the Lord."                                     
                                                    {BK9|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  "As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity,          
united by brotherly love- let us pray!" thought Natasha.                    
  "For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our           
souls."                                                                     
  "For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us,"         
prayed Natasha.                                                             
  When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and         
Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she            
remembered Prince Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her      
all the wrongs she had done him. When they prayed for those who love        
us, she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and            
mother and Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had          
acted toward them, and feeling all the strength of her love for             
them. When they prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of         
her enemies and people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She        
included among her enemies the creditors and all who had business           
dealings with her father, and always at the thought of enemies and          
those who hated her she remembered Anatole who had done her so much         
harm- and though he did not hate her she gladly prayed for him as           
for an enemy. Only at prayer did she feel able to think clearly and         
calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole, as men for whom her feelings were      
as nothing compared with her awe and devotion to God. When they prayed      
for the Imperial family and the Synod, she bowed very low and made the      
sign of the cross, saying to herself that even if she did not               
understand, still she could not doubt, and at any rate loved the            
governing Synod and prayed for it.                                          
  When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over         
his breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to        
Christ the Lord!"                                                           
                                                    {BK9|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  "Commit ourselves to God," Natasha inwardly repeated. "Lord God, I        
submit myself to Thy will!" she thought. "I want nothing, wish for          
nothing; teach me what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take          
me!" prayed Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing      
herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if expecting some         
invisible power at any moment to take her and deliver her from              
herself, from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.               
  The countess looked round several times at her daughter's softened        
face and shining eyes and prayed God to help her.                           
  Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual          
order Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool,           
the one he knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it           
before the doors of the sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his      
purple velvet biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down        
with an effort. Everybody followed his example and they looked at           
one another in surprise. Then came the prayer just received from the        
Synod- a prayer for the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.        
  "Lord God of might, God of our salvation!" began the priest in            
that voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the            
Slav clergy read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.         
  "Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and      
blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and        
have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay          
waste the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are              
gathered together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear             
Jerusalem, Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow          
Thine altars, and to desecrate our holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how      
long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful           
power?                                                                      
                                                    {BK9|CH18 ^paragraph 20}
  "Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might        
our most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich;          
be mindful of his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to         
his righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless         
his counsels, his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom        
by Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy, even as        
Thou gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and          
David over Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the hands      
of those who have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins        
with strength for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to      
help us; confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against      
us, may they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust           
before the wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and put them        
to flight; may they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the          
plots they have laid in secret be turned against them; let them fall        
before Thy servants' feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art      
able to save both great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot             
prevail against Thee!                                                       
  "God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and                     
loving-kindness which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us,           
but be gracious to our unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy      
many mercies regard not our transgressions and iniquities! Create in        
us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us, strengthen us all      
in Thy faith, fortify our hope, inspire us with true love one for           
another, arm us with unity of spirit in the righteous defense of the        
heritage Thou gavest to us and to our fathers, and let not the scepter      
of the wicked be exalted against the destiny of those Thou hast             
sanctified.                                                                 
  "O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust,         
let us not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token      
of Thy blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see      
it and be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know that        
Thou art the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this        
day, O Lord, and grant us Thy salvation; make the hearts of Thy             
servants to rejoice in Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy        
them swiftly beneath the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou art        
the defense, the succor, and the victory of them that put their             
trust in Thee, and to Thee be all glory, to Father, Son, and Holy           
Ghost, now and forever, world without end. Amen."                           
  In Natasha's receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her         
strongly. She listened to every word about the victory of Moses over        
Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about         
the destruction of "Thy Jerusalem," and she prayed to God with the          
tenderness and emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but            
without fully understanding what she was asking of God in that prayer.      
She shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of               
righteousness, for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope,        
and its animation by love. But she could not pray that her enemies          
might be trampled under foot when but a few minutes before she had          
been wishing she had more of them that she might pray for them. But         
neither could she doubt the righteousness of the prayer that was being      
read on bended knees. She felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe      
at the thought of the punishment that overtakes men for their sins,         
and especially of her own sins, and she prayed to God to forgive            
them all, and her too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and         
happiness. And it seemed to her that God heard her prayer.                  
                                                                            
BK9|CH19                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with                 
Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that      
seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was               
appearing on his own horizon- from that day the problem of the              
vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly          
tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question           
"Why?" "Wherefore?" which had come to him amid every occupation, was        
now replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former           
question, but by her image. When he listened to, or himself took            
part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of human              
baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not ask        
himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so              
transient and incomprehensible- but he remembered her as he had last        
seen her, and all his doubts vanished- not because she had answered         
the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of           
her transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of              
spiritual activity in which no one could be justified or guilty- a          
realm of beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever            
worldly baseness presented itself to him, he said to himself:               
  "Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the Tsar, and the         
country and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter?         
She smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her,      
and no one will ever know it." And his soul felt calm and peaceful.         
  Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same            
idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the         
Rostovs' there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the            
habits and acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that        
bore him along irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more               
disquieting reports came from the seat of war and Natasha's health          
began to improve and she no longer aroused in him the former feeling        
of careful pity, an ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not        
explain, took possession of him. He felt that the condition he was          
in could not continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which             
would change his whole life, and he impatiently sought everywhere           
for signs of that approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons        
had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon,          
drawn from the Revelation of St. John.                                      
  In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:                   
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK9|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  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:                          
                                                    {BK9|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
        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                               
                                                    {BK9|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
               t    u    v    w    x    y                                   
              100  110  120  130  140  150                                  
                          z                                                 
                         160                                                
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK9|CH19 ^paragraph 20}
  Writing the words L'Empereur Napoleon in numbers, it appears that         
the sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon therefore the beast foretold      
in the Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the             
words quarante-deux,* which was the term allowed to the beast that          
"spoke great things and blasphemies," the same number 666 was               
obtained; from which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon's        
power had come in the year 1812 when the French emperor was forty-two.      
This prophecy pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what      
would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon,           
and tried by the same system of using letters as numbers and adding         
them up, to find an answer to the question that engrossed him. He           
wrote the words L'Empereur Alexandre, La nation russe and added up          
their numbers, but the sums were either more or less than 666. Once         
when making such calculations he wrote down his own name in French,         
Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the sum of the numbers did not come right.      
Then he changed the spelling, substituting a z for the s and adding de      
and the article le, still without obtaining the desired result. Then        
it occurred to him: if the answer to the question were contained in         
his name, his nationality would also be given in the answer. So he          
wrote Le russe Besuhof and adding up the numbers got 671. This was          
only five too much, and five was represented by e, the very letter          
elided from the article le before the word Empereur. By omitting the        
e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he sought. L'russe             
Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him. How, or by what means,        
he was connected with the great event foretold in the Apocalypse he         
did not know, but he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His        
love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the comet,            
666, L'Empereur Napoleon, and L'russe Besuhof- all this had to              
mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound, petty sphere      
of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held captive and lead him to      
a great achievement and great happiness.                                    
-                                                                           
  *Forty-two.                                                               
-                                                                           
-                                                                           
  On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre         
had promised the Rostovs to bring them, from Count Rostopchin whom          
he knew well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the           
army. In the morning, when he went to call at Rostopchin's he met           
there a courier fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who        
often danced at Moscow balls.                                               
                                                    {BK9|CH19 ^paragraph 25}
  "Do, please, for heaven's sake, relieve me of something!" said the        
courier. "I have a sackful of letters to parents."                          
  Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his father.           
Pierre took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him the Emperor's         
appeal to Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders,        
and his own most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders,         
Pierre found in one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and           
rewarded, the name of Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George's Cross of      
the Fourth Class for courage shown in the Ostrovna affair, and in           
the same order the name of Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the        
command of a regiment of Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind        
the Rostovs of Bolkonski, Pierre could not refrain from making them         
happy by the news of their son's having received a decoration, so he        
sent that printed army order and Nicholas' letter to the Rostovs,           
keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and the other orders to take with         
him when he went to dinner.                                                 
  His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter's tone of           
anxious hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how      
badly things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of         
spies in Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that                
Napoleon promised to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn,         
and the talk of the Emperor's being expected to arrive next day- all        
aroused with fresh force that feeling of agitation and expectation          
in Pierre which he had been conscious of ever since the appearance          
of the comet, and especially since the beginning of the war.                
  He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done        
so had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society        
of Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached              
perpetual peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact         
that when he saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform        
and were talking patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step.      
But the chief reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the        
army lay in the vague idea that he was L'russe Besuhof who had the          
number of the beast, 666; that his part in the great affair of setting      
a limit to the power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous          
things had been predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought      
not to undertake anything, but wait for what was bound to come to           
pass.                                                                       
                                                                            
BK9|CH20                                                                    
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that day, as          
usual on Sundays.                                                           
  Pierre came early so as to find them alone.                               
  He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had      
he not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried        
his bulk with evident ease.                                                 
  He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman      
did not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his              
master was at the Rostovs' he stayed till midnight. The Rostovs'            
footman rushed eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take      
his hat and stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and        
stick in the anteroom.                                                      
  The first person he saw in the house was Natasha. Even before he saw      
her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing           
solfa exercises in the music room. He knew that she had not sung since      
her illness, and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted          
him. He opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had      
worn at church, walking about the room singing. She had her back to         
him when he opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his         
broad, surprised face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him.              
                                                     {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
  "I want to try to sing again," she said, adding as if by way of           
excuse, "it is, at least, something to do."                                 
  "That's capital!"                                                         
  "How glad I am you've come! I am so happy today," she said, with the      
old animation Pierre had not seen in her for along time. "You know          
Nicholas has received a St. George's Cross? I am so proud of him."          
  "Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don't want to interrupt          
you," he added, and was about to go to the drawing room.                    
  Natasha stopped him.                                                      
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  "Count, is it wrong of me to sing?" she said blushing, and fixing         
her eyes inquiringly on him.                                                
  "No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?"       
  "I don't know myself," Natasha answered quickly, "but I should not        
like to do anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely.        
You don't know how important you are to me, how much you've done for        
me...." She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her      
words. "I saw in that same army order that he, Bolkonski" (she              
whispered the name hastily), "is in Russia, and in the army again.          
What do you think?"- she was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid           
her strength might fail her- "Will he ever forgive me? Will he not          
always have a bitter feeling toward me? What do you think? What do you      
think?"                                                                     
  "I think..." Pierre replied, "that he has nothing to forgive....          
If I were in his place..."                                                  
  By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the           
day when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not            
himself but the best man in the world and free, he would ask on his         
knees for her hand; and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love      
took possession of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she         
did not give him time to say them.                                          
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, you... you..." she said, uttering the word you rapturously-         
"that's a different thing. I know no one kinder, more generous, or          
better than you; nobody could be! Had you not been there then, and now      
too, I don't know what would have become of me, because..."                 
  Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music        
before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and        
down the room.                                                              
  Just then Petya came running in from the drawing room.                    
  Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips           
and resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter the university, but        
he and his friend Obolenski had lately, in secret, agreed to join           
the hussars.                                                                
  Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this             
affair. He had asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted        
in the hussars.                                                             
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 20}
  Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what         
Petya was saying.                                                           
  Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.                     
  "Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for heaven's sake! You         
are my only hope " said Petya.                                              
  "Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I'll mention it, I'll bring      
it all up today."                                                           
  "Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?" asked the old count.        
"The countess has been to Mass at the Razumovskis' and heard the new        
prayer. She says it's very fine."                                           
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 25}
  "Yes, I've got it," said Pierre. "The Emperor is to be here               
tomorrow... there's to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility,         
and they are talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me      
congratulate you!"                                                          
  "Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?"                 
  "We are again retreating. They say we're already near Smolensk,"          
replied Pierre.                                                             
  "O Lord, O Lord!" exclaimed the count. "Where is the manifesto?"          
  "The Emperor's appeal? Oh yes!"                                           
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 30}
  Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not         
find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the            
countess who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently        
expecting Natasha, who had left off singing but had not yet come            
into the drawing room.                                                      
  "On my word, I don't know what I've done with it," he said.               
  "There he is, always losing everything!" remarked the countess.           
  Natasha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face           
and sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered,            
Pierre's features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and          
while still searching for the papers he glanced at her several times.       
  "No, really! I'll drive home, I must have left them there. I'll           
certainly..."                                                               
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 35}
  "But you'll be late for dinner."                                          
  "Oh! And my coachman has gone."                                           
  But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom,           
had found them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully tucked them          
under the lining. Pierre was about to begin reading.                        
  "No, after dinner," said the old count, evidently expecting much          
enjoyment from that reading.                                                
  At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new          
chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the town news, of the           
illness of the old Georgian princess, of Metivier's disappearance from      
Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin        
and accused of being a French "spyer" (so Count Rostopchin had told         
the story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured the people            
that he was "not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin."              
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 40}
  "People are being arrested..." said the count. "I've told the             
countess she should not speak French so much. It's not the time for it      
now."                                                                       
  "And have you heard?" Shinshin asked. "Prince Golitsyn has engaged a      
master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak              
French in the streets."                                                     
  "And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call up the             
militia, you too will have to mount a horse," remarked the old              
count, addressing Pierre.                                                   
  Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming        
not to grasp what was said. He looked at the count.                         
  "Oh yes, the war," he said. "No! What sort of warrior should I make?      
And yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can't make it out. I        
don't know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these         
times no one can answer for himself."                                       
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 45}
  After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy             
chair and with a serious face asked Sonya, who was considered an            
excellent reader, to read the appeal.                                       
-                                                                           
  "To Moscow, our ancient Capital!                                          
  "The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He      
comes to despoil our beloved country,"                                      
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 50}
  Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count             
listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.        
  Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father         
and now at Pierre.                                                          
  Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The              
countess shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn          
expression in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that           
the danger threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshin,            
with a sarcastic smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make         
fun of anything that gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any         
remark of the count's, or even the manifesto itself should no better        
pretext present itself.                                                     
  After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes         
the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious              
nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the              
attention that was being paid to her, read the last words:                  
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 55}
  "We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that           
Capital and in others parts of our realm for consultation, and for the      
direction of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path        
and those freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the      
ruin he hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may              
Europe delivered from bondage glorify the name of Russia!"                  
-                                                                           
  "Yes, that's it!" cried the count, opening his moist eyes and             
sniffing repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his        
nose; and he added, "Let the Emperor but say the word and we'll             
sacrifice everything and begrudge nothing."                                 
  Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on        
the count's patriotism, Natasha jumped up from her place and ran to         
her father.                                                                 
  "What a darling our Papa is!" she cried, kissing him, and she             
again looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned      
to her with her better spirits.                                             
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 60}
  "There! Here's a patriot for you!" said Shinshin.                         
  "Not a patriot at all, but simply..." Natasha replied in an               
injured tone. "Everything seems funny to you, but this isn't at all         
a joke...."                                                                 
  "A joke indeed!" put in the count. "Let him but say the word and          
we'll all go.... We're not Germans!"                                        
  "But did you notice, it says, 'for consultation'?" said Pierre.           
  "Never mind what it's for...."                                            
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 65}
  At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came      
up to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking          
voice that was now deep and now shrill:                                     
  "Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it's as you            
please, but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army,           
because I can't... that's all...."                                          
  The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and      
turned angrily to her husband.                                              
  "That comes of your talking!" said she.                                   
  But the count had already recovered from his excitement.                  
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 70}
  "Come, come!" said he. "Here's a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You          
must study."                                                                
  "It's not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger than I, and          
he's going too. Besides, all the same I can't study now when..." Petya      
stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words,      
"when our Fatherland is in danger."                                         
  "That'll do, that'll do- nonsense...."                                    
  "But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything."               
  "Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!" cried the count, with a glance at his      
wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.               
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 75}
  "And I tell you- Peter Kirilych here will also tell you..."               
  "Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother's milk has hardly dried on your        
lips and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you,"           
and the count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably      
to reread them in his study before having a nap.                            
  "Well, Peter Kirilych, let's go and have a smoke," he said.               
  Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha's unwontedly brilliant         
eyes, continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had        
reduced him to this condition.                                              
  "No, I think I'll go home."                                               
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 80}
  "Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don't          
often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine," said the count        
good-naturedly, pointing to Natasha, "only brightens up when you're         
here."                                                                      
  "Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business..."            
said Pierre hurriedly.                                                      
  "Well, then, au revoir!" said the count, and went out of the room.        
  "Why are you going? Why are you upset?" asked Natasha, and she            
looked challengingly into Pierre's eyes.                                    
  "Because I love you!" was what he wanted to say, but he did not           
say it, and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.         
                                                    {BK9|CH20 ^paragraph 85}
  "Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No,         
simply I have business...."                                                 
  "Why? No, tell me!" Natasha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.        
  They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He         
tried to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he         
silently kissed her hand and went out.                                      
  Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs' any more.               
                                                                            
BK9|CH21                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXI                                                               
-                                                                           
  After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went to his room        
and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea,      
silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to      
notice anything.                                                            
  Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the                
Rostovs' domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him.      
That morning Petya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and      
collar to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking           
glass, gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without           
saying a word to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back        
door, trying to avoid notice. Petya decided to go straight to where         
the Emperor was and to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting         
(he imagined the Emperor to be always surrounded by                         
gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostov, in spite of his youth          
wished to serve his country; that youth could be no hindrance to            
loyalty, and that he was ready to... While dressing, Petya had              
prepared many fine things he meant to say to the gentleman-in-waiting.      
  It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya counted for          
success in reaching the Emperor- he even thought how surprised              
everyone would be at his youthfulness- and yet in the arrangement of        
his collar and hair and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to          
appear a grown-up man. But the farther he went and the more his             
attention was diverted by the ever-increasing crowds moving toward the      
Kremlin, the less he remembered to walk with the sedateness and             
deliberation of a man. As he approached the Kremlin he even began to        
avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck out his elbows in a                
menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he was so pressed to           
the wall by people who probably were unaware of the patriotic               
intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his                  
determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in,        
rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a         
footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing            
some time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front of           
the others without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began      
resolutely working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in           
front of him, who was the first against whom he directed his                
efforts, angrily shouted at him:                                            
  "What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don't you see we're all        
standing still? Then why push?"                                             
  "Anybody can shove," said the footman, and also began working his         
elbows to such effect that he pushed Petya into a very filthy corner        
of the gateway.                                                             
                                                     {BK9|CH21 ^paragraph 5}
  Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the          
damp collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a            
man's.                                                                      
  He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if          
he were now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he          
would not be admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten      
oneself up or move to another place, because of the crowd. One of           
the generals who drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostovs', and        
Petya thought of asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that      
would not be a manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed         
in, the crowd, carrying Petya with it, streamed forward into the            
Kremlin Square which was already full of people. There were people not      
only in the square, but everywhere- on the slopes and on the roofs. As      
soon as Petya found himself in the square he clearly heard the sound        
of bells and the joyous voices of the crowd that filled the whole           
Kremlin.                                                                    
  For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were         
bared, and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Petya was being        
pressed so that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted,           
"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and              
pinched, but could see nothing except the people about him.                 
  All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm.      
A tradesman's wife standing beside Petya sobbed, and the tears ran          
down her cheeks.                                                            
  "Father! Angel! Dear one!" she kept repeating, wiping away her tears      
with her fingers.                                                           
                                                    {BK9|CH21 ^paragraph 10}
  "Hurrah!" was heard on all sides.                                         
  For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush         
forward.                                                                    
  Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and rolling his          
eyes ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting             
"hurrah!" as if he were prepared that instant to kill himself and           
everyone else, but on both sides of him other people with similarly         
ferocious faces pushed forward and everybody shouted "hurrah!"              
  "So this is what the Emperor is!" thought Petya. "No, I can't             
petition him myself- that would be too bold." But in spite of this          
he continued to struggle desperately forward, and from between the          
backs of those in front he caught glimpses of an open space with a          
strip of red cloth spread out on it; but just then the crowd swayed         
back- the police in front were pushing back those who had pressed           
too close to the procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace        
to the Cathedral of the Assumption- and Petya unexpectedly received         
such a blow on his side and ribs and was squeezed so hard that              
suddenly everything grew dim before his eyes and he lost                    
consciousness. When he came to himself, a man of clerical appearance        
with a tuft of gray hair at the back of his head and wearing a              
shabby blue cassock- probably a church clerk and chanter- was               
holding him under the arm with one hand while warding off the pressure      
of the crowd with the other.                                                
  "You've crushed the young gentleman!" said the clerk. "What are           
you up to? Gently!... They've crushed him, crushed him!"                    
                                                    {BK9|CH21 ^paragraph 15}
  The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd            
spread out again more evenly, and the clerk led Petya- pale and             
breathless- to the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Petya,        
and suddenly a crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those         
who stood nearest him attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him      
on the raised platform of the cannon, and reproached those others           
(whoever they might be) who had crushed him.                                
  "One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it?           
Killing people! Poor dear, he's as white as a sheet!"- various              
voices were heard saying.                                                   
  Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain      
had passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had         
obtained a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the               
Emperor who would be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of         
presenting his petition. If he could only see the Emperor he would          
be happy!                                                                   
  While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption-      
it was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor's        
arrival and of thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the            
Turks- the crowd outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling           
kvas, gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was                 
particularly fond), and ordinary conversation could again be heard.         
A tradesman's wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how          
much the shawl had cost; another was saying that all silk goods had         
now got dear. The clerk who had rescued Petya was talking to a              
functionary about the priests who were officiating that day with the        
bishop. The clerk several times used the word "plenary" (of the             
service), a word Petya did not understand. Two young citizens were          
joking with some serf girls who were cracking nuts. All these               
conversations, especially the joking with the girls, were such as           
might have had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but they did        
not interest him now. He sat on his elevation- the pedestal of the          
cannon- still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and          
by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced        
when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still             
further intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.            
  Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the               
embankment, to celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and           
the crowd rushed impetuously toward the embankment to watch the             
firing. Petya too would have run there, but the clerk who had taken         
the young gentleman under his protection stopped him. The firing was        
still proceeding when officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting          
came running out of the cathedral, and after them others in a more          
leisurely manner: caps were again raised, and those who had run to          
look at the cannon ran back again. At last four men in uniforms and         
sashes emerged from the cathedral doors. "Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the      
crowd again.                                                                
                                                    {BK9|CH21 ^paragraph 20}
  "Which is he? Which?" asked Petya in a tearful voice, of those            
around him, but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and         
Petya, fixing on one of those four men, whom he could not clearly           
see for the tears of joy that filled his eyes, concentrated all his         
enthusiasm on him- though it happened not to be the Emperor-                
frantically shouted "Hurrah!" and resolved that tomorrow, come what         
might, he would join the army.                                              
  The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and          
began to disperse. It was already late, and Petya had not eaten             
anything and was drenched with perspiration, yet he did not go home         
but stood with that diminishing, but still considerable, crowd              
before the palace while the Emperor dined- looking in at the palace         
windows, expecting he knew not what, and envying alike the notables he      
saw arriving at the entrance to dine with the Emperor and the court         
footmen who served at table, glimpses of whom could be seen through         
the windows.                                                                
  While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of the window,          
said:                                                                       
  "The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again."                  
  The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit,          
rose and went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya among them,      
rushed toward the balcony.                                                  
                                                    {BK9|CH21 ^paragraph 25}
  "Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!..." cried the crowd, and Petya          
with it, and again the women and men of weaker mold, Petya among them,      
wept with joy.                                                              
  A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand        
broke off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A           
coachman in a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched        
it up. Several people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this      
the Emperor had a plateful of biscuits brought him and began                
throwing them down from the balcony. Petya's eyes grew bloodshot,           
and still more excited by the danger of being crushed, he rushed at         
the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to have a biscuit from        
the Tsar's hand and he felt that he must not give way. He sprang            
forward and upset an old woman who was catching at a biscuit; the           
old woman did not consider herself defeated though she was lying on         
the ground- she grabbed at some biscuits but her hand did not reach         
them. Petya pushed her hand away with his knee, seized a biscuit,           
and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted "Hurrah!" with a voice      
already hoarse.                                                             
  The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd         
began to disperse.                                                          
  "There! I said if only we waited- and so it was!" was being joyfully      
said by various people.                                                     
  Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that         
all the enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home         
from the Kremlin, but called on his friend Obolenski, who was               
fifteen and was also entering the regiment. On returning home Petya         
announced resolutely and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter         
the service he would run away. And next day, Count Ilya Rostov- though      
he had not yet quite yielded- went to inquire how he could arrange for      
Petya to serve where there would be least danger.                           
                                                                            
BK9|CH22                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of            
carriages were standing outside the Sloboda Palace.                         
  The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry      
in their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted          
coats of blue cloth and wearing medals. in the noblemen's hall there        
was an incessant movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat        
on high-backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of the            
Emperor, but most of the gentry were strolling about the room.              
  All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the Club or in             
their own houses, were in uniform- some in that of Catherine's day,         
others in that of Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of         
Alexander's time or the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the           
general characteristic of being in uniform imparted something               
strange and fantastic to these diverse and familiar personalities,          
both old and young. The old men, dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow,         
and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled, were especially striking. For           
the most part they sat quietly in their places and were silent, or, if      
they walked about and talked, attached themselves to someone                
younger. On all these faces, as on the faces of the crowd Petya had         
seen in the Square, there was a striking contradiction: the general         
expectation of a solemn event, and at the same time the everyday            
interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook, Zinaida Dmitrievna's      
health, and so on.                                                          
  Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a                
nobleman's uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated;      
this extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the             
merchant-class- les etats generaux (States-General)- evoked in him a        
whole series of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply          
graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat social and the French           
Revolution. The words that had struck him in the Emperor's appeal-          
that the sovereign was coming to the capital for consultation with his      
people- strengthened this idea. And imagining that in this direction        
something important which he had long awaited was drawing near, he          
strolled about watching and listening to conversations, but nowhere         
finding any confirmation of the ideas that occupied him.                    
  The Emperor's manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all        
moved about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of                   
conversation, Pierre heard questions of where the marshals of the           
nobility were to stand when the Emperor entered, when a ball should be      
given in the Emperor's honor, whether they should group themselves          
by districts or by whole provinces... and so on; but as soon as the         
war was touched on, or what the nobility had been convened for, the         
talk became undecided and indefinite. Then all preferred listening          
to speaking.                                                                
                                                     {BK9|CH22 ^paragraph 5}
  A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a               
retired naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small        
crowd was pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had         
formed round the speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a              
military uniform of Catherine's time, was sauntering with a pleasant        
smile among the crowd, with all of whom he was acquainted. He too           
approached that group and listened with a kindly smile and nods of          
approval, as he always did, to what the speaker was saying. The             
retired naval man was speaking very boldly, as was evident from the         
expression on the faces of the listeners and from the fact that some        
people Pierre knew as the meekest and quietest of men walked away           
disapprovingly or expressed disagreement with him. Pierre pushed his        
way into the middle of the group, listened, and convinced himself that      
the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite different from his         
own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly sonorous, musical,           
and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly swallowing his r's and          
generally slurring his consonants: the voice of a man calling out to        
his servant, "Heah! Bwing me my pipe!" It was indicative of                 
dissipation and the exercise of authority.                                  
  "What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise militia for the         
Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our patte'n? If the noble                
awistocwacy of the pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its           
loyalty to our sov'weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we                 
fo'gotten the waising of the militia in the yeah 'seven? All that           
did was to enwich the pwiests' sons and thieves and wobbahs...."            
  Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded approval.                     
  "And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only         
wuined our farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o' ou' men          
will wetu'n neithah soldiers no' peasants, and we'll get only               
depwavity fwom them. The nobility don't gwudge theah lives- evewy           
one of us will go and bwing in more wecwuits, and the sov'weign" (that      
was the way he referred to the Emperor) "need only say the word and         
we'll all die fo' him!" added the orator with animation.                    
  Count Rostov's mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but      
Pierre wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred,         
but not yet sure what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had        
he opened his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in      
his head, with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the          
first speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to managing            
debates and to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct        
tones:                                                                      
                                                    {BK9|CH22 ^paragraph 10}
  "I imagine, sir," said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth,             
"that we have been summoned here not to discuss whether it's best           
for the empire at the present moment to adopt conscription or to            
call out the militia. We have been summoned to reply to the appeal          
with which our sovereign the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what      
is best- conscription or the militia- we can leave to the supreme           
authority...."                                                              
  Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his         
heart against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow           
attitude into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped             
forward and interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would      
say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French        
or expressing himself in bookish Russian.                                   
  "Excuse me, your excellency," he began. (He was well acquainted with      
the senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address           
him formally.) "Though I don't agree with the gentleman..." (he             
hesitated: he wished to say, "Mon tres honorable preopinant"- "My very      
honorable opponent") "with the gentleman... whom I have not the             
honor of knowing, I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not        
merely to express their sympathy and enthusiasm but also to consider        
the means by which we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine," he went        
on, warming to his subject, "that the Emperor himself would not be          
satisfied to find in us merely owners of serfs whom we are willing          
to devote to his service, and chair a canon* we are ready to make of        
ourselves- and not to obtain from us any co-co-counsel."                    
-                                                                           
  *"Food for cannon."                                                       
                                                    {BK9|CH22 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator's             
sarcastic smile and the freedom of Pierre's remarks. Only Count Rostov      
was pleased with them as he had been pleased with those of the naval        
officer, the senator, and in general with whatever speech he had            
last heard.                                                                 
  "I think that before discussing these questions," Pierre                  
continued, "we should ask the Emperor- most respectfully ask His            
Majesty- to let us know the number of our troops and the position in        
which our army and our forces now are, and then..."                         
  But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked        
from three sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old                 
acquaintance, a boston player who had always been well disposed toward      
him, Stepan Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and whether      
as a result of the uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw              
before him quite a different man. With a sudden expression of               
malevolence on his aged face, Adraksin shouted at Pierre:                   
  "In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the          
Emperor about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that          
right, the Emperor could not answer such a question. The troops are         
moved according to the enemy's movements and the number of men              
increases and decreases..."                                                 
                                                    {BK9|CH22 ^paragraph 20}
  Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty        
years of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies' and knew as      
a bad cardplayer, and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to      
Pierre, interrupted Adraksin.                                               
  "Yes, and this is not a time for discussing," he continued, "but for      
acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy           
Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our             
wives and children." The nobleman smote his breast. "We will all            
arise, every one of us will go, for our father the Tsar!" he                
shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were          
heard in the crowd. "We are Russians and will not grudge our blood          
in defense of our faith, the throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease      
raving if we are sons of our Fatherland! We will show Europe how            
Russia rises to the defense of Russia!"                                     
  Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that         
his words, apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible         
than the sound of his opponent's voice.                                     
  Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing approval;            
several persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end        
of a phrase, said:                                                          
  "That's right, quite right! Just so!"                                     
                                                    {BK9|CH22 ^paragraph 25}
  Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his        
serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in           
order to be able to improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many            
voices shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostov had        
not time to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased,      
dispersed, re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the            
largest hall and to the big table. Not only was Pierre's attempt to         
speak unsuccessful, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and        
people turned away from him as from a common enemy. This happened           
not because they were displeased by the substance of his speech, which      
had even been forgotten after the many subsequent speeches, but to          
animate it the crowd needed a tangible object to love and a tangible        
object to hate. Pierre became the latter. Many other orators spoke          
after the excited nobleman, and all in the same tone. Many spoke            
eloquently and with originality.                                            
  Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized           
(cries of "author! author!" were heard in the crowd), said that             
"hell must be repulsed by hell," and that he had seen a child               
smiling at lightning flashes and thunderclaps, but "we will not be          
that child."                                                                
  "Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!" was repeated approvingly in the back         
rows of the crowd.                                                          
  The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or         
bald seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of        
whom Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or             
playing boston at the clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd      
advanced to the table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of      
the chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes two           
together. Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to           
say and hastened to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked         
their brains to find some thought and hastened to utter it. The old         
magnates, whom Pierre knew, sat and turned to look first at one and         
then at another, and their faces for the most part only expressed           
the fact that they found it very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited,        
and the general desire to show that they were ready to go to all            
lengths- which found expression in the tones and looks more than in         
the substance of the speeches- infected him too. He did not renounce        
his opinions, but felt himself in some way to blame and wished to           
justify himself.                                                            
  "I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices      
when we know what is needed!" said he, trying to be heard above the         
other voices.                                                               
                                                    {BK9|CH22 ^paragraph 30}
  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!..."                                        
                                                                            
BK9|CH23                                                                    
  CHAPTER XXIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding chin and alert        
eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder,         
entered the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of             
gentry.                                                                     
  "Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment," said                
Rostopchin. "I am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are      
in, I think there is little need for discussion. The Emperor has            
deigned to summon us and the merchants. Millions will pour forth            
from there"- he pointed to the merchants' hall- "but our business is        
to supply men and not spare ourselves... That is the least we can do!"      
  A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the           
table. The whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all           
the preceding noise the sound of their old voices saying one after          
another, "I agree," or for variety, "I too am of that opinion," and so      
on had even a mournful effect.                                              
  The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow         
nobility and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully                 
equipped, out of every thousand serfs, as the Smolensk gentry had           
done. Their chairs made a scraping noise as the gentlemen who had           
conferred rose with apparent relief, and began walking up and down,         
arm in arm, to stretch their legs and converse in couples.                  
  "The Emperor! The Emperor!" a sudden cry resounded through the halls      
and the whole throng hurried to the entrance.                               
                                                     {BK9|CH23 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                           
                                                    {BK9|CH23 ^paragraph 10}
  "Yes, most precious... a royal word," said Count Rostov, with a sob.      
He stood at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything,             
understood everything in his own way.                                       
  From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the             
merchants. There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those      
who saw him come out from the merchants' hall with tears of emotion in      
his eyes. As became known later, he had scarcely begun to address           
the merchants before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded in         
a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he was coming out            
accompanied by two merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat                
otkupshchik. The other was the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face         
and narrow beard. Both were weeping. Tears filled the thin man's eyes,      
and the fat otkupshchik sobbed outright like a child and kept               
repeating:                                                                  
  "Our lives and property- take them, Your Majesty!"                        
  Pierre's one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he           
was ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice                   
everything. He now felt ashamed of his speech with its                      
constitutional tendency and sought an opportunity of effacing it.           
Having heard that Count Mamonov was furnishing a regiment, Bezukhov at      
once informed Rostopchin that he would give a thousand men and their        
maintenance.                                                                
  Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears,      
and at once consented to Petya's request and went himself to enter his      
name.                                                                       
                                                    {BK9|CH23 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                
                                                                            
BK10                                                                        
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                 BOOK TEN: 1812                             
                                                                            
BK10|CH1                                                                    
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going      
to Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he          
received, could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to           
the stimulating influence of a June morning, and could not refrain          
from bursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashev.       
  Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be              
personally insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the      
best way, because he wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a          
great commander. Rostov charged the French because he could not             
restrain his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same        
way the innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord         
with their personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and             
aims. They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant,        
reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it          
of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of              
history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible          
to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher         
they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.                  
  The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal         
interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of            
that time but its historic results.                                         
  Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal           
aims, to further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of        
them at all expected- neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still            
less any of those who did the actual fighting.                              
  The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear          
to us now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand,           
its advance into the heart of Russia late in the season without any         
preparation for a winter campaign and, on the other, the character          
given to the war by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the      
foe this aroused among the Russian people. But no one at the time           
foresaw (what now seems so evident) that this was the only way an army      
of eight hundred thousand men- the best in the world and led by the         
best general- could be destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half        
its numerical strength, and led by inexperienced commanders as the          
Russian army was. Not only did no one see this, but on the Russian          
side every effort was made to hinder the only thing that could save         
Russia, while on the French side, despite Napoleon's experience and         
so-called military genius, every effort was directed to pushing on          
to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to doing the very thing        
that was bound to lead to destruction.                                      
                                                     {BK10|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of      
saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he         
sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolensk,      
and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the             
campaign was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of      
telling us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war        
plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and            
this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain              
Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself-           
pointing to notes, projects, and letters which contain hints of such a      
line of action. But all these hints at what happened, both from the         
French side and the Russian, are advanced only because they fit in          
with the event. Had that event not occurred these hints would have          
been forgotten, as we have forgotten the thousands and millions of          
hints and expectations to the contrary which were current then but          
have now been forgotten because the event falsified them. There are         
always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that however        
it may end there will always be people to say: "I said then that it         
would be so," quite forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures      
many were to quite the contrary effect.                                     
  Conjectures as to Napoleon's awareness of the danger of extending         
his line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the         
depths of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much              
straining can historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and         
his marshals, or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts        
are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period      
of the war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw           
the French into the heart of the country, but from their first entry        
into Russia everything was done to stop them. And not only was              
Napoleon not afraid to extend his line, but he welcomed every step          
forward as a triumph and did not seek battle as eagerly as in former        
campaigns, but very lazily.                                                 
  At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our         
sole aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage      
if we meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the             
country. Our Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every        
inch of Russian soil and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp           
was formed on Pfuel's plan, and there was no intention of retiring          
farther. The Emperor reproached the commanders in chief for every step      
they retired. He could not bear the idea of letting the enemy even          
reach Smolensk, still less could he contemplate the burning of Moscow,      
and when our armies did unite he was displeased that Smolensk was           
abandoned and burned without a general engagement having been fought        
under its walls.                                                            
  So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were        
still more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating          
into the depths of the country.                                             
  Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country        
and missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he           
was at Smolensk and thought only of how to advance farther, though          
as we now see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.                    
                                                    {BK10|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of        
the advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders         
then think of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring        
of Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result of any        
plan, for no one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most        
complex interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those who            
took part in the war and had no perception whatever of the inevitable,      
or of the one way of saving Russia. Everything came about                   
fortuitously. The armies were divided at the commencement of the            
campaign. We tried to unite them, with the evident intention of giving      
battle and checking the enemy's advance, and by this effort to unite        
them while avoiding battle with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily      
withdrawing the armies at an acute angle- we led the French on to           
Smolensk. But we withdrew at an acute angle not only because the            
French advanced between our two armies; the angle became still more         
acute and we withdrew still farther, because Barclay de Tolly was an        
unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration (who would come his               
command), and Bagration- being in command of the second army- tried to      
postpone joining up and coming under Barclay's command as long as he        
could. Bagration was slow in effecting the junction- though that was        
the chief aim of all at headquarters- because, as he alleged, he            
exposed his army to danger on this march, and it was best for him to        
retire more to the left and more to the south, worrying the enemy from      
flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for his army;         
and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under the           
command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior          
to his own.                                                                 
  The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence           
and ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of             
advisers and plans, destroyed the first army's energy and it retired.       
  The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but                 
Paulucci, aiming at becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed      
his energy to influence Alexander, and Pfuel's whole plan was               
abandoned and the command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not      
inspire confidence his power was limited. The armies were divided,          
there was no unity of command, and Barclay was unpopular; but from          
this confusion, division, and the unpopularity of the foreign               
commander in chief, there resulted on the one hand indecision and           
the avoidance of a battle (which we could not have refrained from           
had the armies been united and had someone else, instead of Barclay,        
been in command) and on the other an ever-increasing indignation            
against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal.                   
  At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and         
indeed the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was        
necessary for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the      
nation in general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor      
to Moscow the strength of the Russian army was trebled.                     
  He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief's                 
undivided control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action         
would then be taken, but the command of the armies became still more        
confused and enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of            
adjutants general remained with the army to keep the commander in           
chief under observation and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling         
less free than ever under the observation of all these "eyes of the         
Emperor," became still more cautious of undertaking any decisive            
action and avoided giving battle.                                           
                                                    {BK10|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at treachery and          
demanded a general engagement. Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the      
others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under         
pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish           
adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with      
Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.                                                
  At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagration                
disliked it.                                                                
  Bagration drove up in a carriage to to the house occupied by              
Barclay. Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet and report to         
his senior officer Bagration.                                               
  Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest of               
magnanimity, took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted,           
agreed with him less than ever. By the Emperor's orders Bagration           
reported direct to him. He wrote to Arakcheev, the Emperor's                
confidant: "It must be as my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with      
the Minister (meaning Barclay). For God's sake send me somewhere            
else if only in command of a regiment. I cannot stand it here.              
Headquarters are so full of Germans that a Russian cannot exist and         
there is no sense in anything. I thought I was really serving my            
sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out that I am serving            
Barclay. I confess I do not want to."                                       
  The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still          
further embittered the relations between the commanders in chief,           
and even less unity resulted. Preparations were made to fight the           
French before Smolensk. A general was sent to survey the position.          
This general, hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a          
corps commander, and, having spent the day with him, returned to            
Barclay and condemned, as unsuitable from every point of view, the          
battleground he had not seen.                                               
                                                    {BK10|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of      
battle, and while we were looking for the French- having lost touch         
with them- the French stumbled upon Neverovski's division and               
reached the walls of Smolensk.                                              
  It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolensk to save        
our lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were        
killed on both sides.                                                       
  Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and          
of the whole people. But Smolensk was burned by its own                     
inhabitants-who had been misled by their governor. And these ruined         
inhabitants, setting an example to other Russians, went to Moscow           
thinking only of their own losses but kindling hatred of the foe.           
Napoleon advanced farther and we retired, thus arriving at the very         
result which caused his destruction.                                        
                                                                            
BK10|CH2                                                                    
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess         
Mary to come to his study.                                                  
  "Well? Are you satisfied now?" said he. "You've made me quarrel with      
my son! Satisfied, are you? That's all you wanted! Satisfied?... It         
hurts me, it hurts. I'm old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well      
then, gloat over it! Gloat over it!"                                        
  After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He      
was ill and did not leave his study.                                        
  Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the        
old prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not admit           
Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon alone attended him.                   
  At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his              
former way of life, devoting himself with special activity to building      
operations and the arrangement of the gardens and completely                
breaking off his relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks           
and cold tone to his daughter seemed to say: "There, you see? You           
plotted against me, you lied to Prince Andrew about my relations            
with that Frenchwoman and made me quarrel with him, but you see I need      
neither her nor you!"                                                       
                                                     {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching      
his lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to         
Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her books, with her           
old nurse, or with "God's folk" who sometimes came by the back door to      
see her.                                                                    
  Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She        
feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at        
the strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another, but she did        
not understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her            
like all previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this        
war, though Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was                
passionately interested in its progress and tried to explain his own        
conception of it to her, and though the "God's folk" who came to see        
her reported, in their own way, the rumors current among the people of      
an invasion by Antichrist, and though Julie (now Princess                   
Drubetskaya), who had resumed correspondence with her, wrote patriotic      
letters from Moscow.                                                        
  "I write you in Russian, my good friend," wrote Julie in her              
Frenchified Russian, "because I have a detestation for all the French,      
and the same for their language which I cannot support to hear              
spoken.... We in Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored             
Emperor.                                                                    
  "My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but      
the news which I have inspires me yet more.                                 
  "You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski, embracing           
his two sons and saying: 'I will perish with them but we will not be        
shaken!' And truly though the enemy was twice stronger than we, we          
were unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The      
princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy         
widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our charpie,          
only you, my friend, are missing..." and so on.                             
                                                    {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance      
of this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not              
recognize it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner.      
The prince's tone was so calm and confident that Princess Mary              
unhesitatingly believed him.                                                
  All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even              
animated. He planned another garden and began a new building for the        
domestic serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about        
him was that he slept very little and, instead of sleeping in his           
study as usual, changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would      
order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he        
remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and        
dozed there without undressing, while- instead of Mademoiselle              
Bourienne- a serf boy read to him. Then again he would spend a night        
in the dining room.                                                         
  On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his      
first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had      
dutifully asked his father's forgiveness for what he had allowed            
himself to say and begged to be restored to his favor. To this              
letter the old prince had replied affectionately, and from that time        
had kept the Frenchwoman at at Prince Andrew's second letter,               
written near Vitebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave a        
brief account of the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had        
drawn and forecasts as to the further progress of the war. In this          
letter Prince Andrew pointed out to his father the danger of staying        
at Bald Hills, so near the theater of war and on the army's direct          
line of march, and advised him to move to Moscow.                           
  At dinner that day, on Dessalles' mentioning that the French were         
said to have already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered his         
son's letter.                                                               
  "There was a letter from Prince Andrew today," he said to Princess        
Mary- "Haven't you read it?"                                                
                                                    {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                      
                                                    {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 20}
  "Go and get it for me," said the old prince to Mademoiselle               
Bourienne. "You know- under the paperweight on the little table."           
  Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.                                 
  "No, don't!" he exclaimed with a frown. "You go, Michael Ivanovich."      
  Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he           
had left the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down        
his napkin and went himself.                                                
  "They can't do anything... always make some muddle," he muttered.         
                                                    {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 25}
  While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle                  
Bourienne, and even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The         
old prince returned with quick steps, accompanied by Michael                
Ivanovich, bringing the letter and a plan. These he put down beside         
him- not letting anyone read them at dinner.                                
  On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess            
Mary and, spreading out before him the plan of the new building and         
fixing his eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she        
had done so Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was          
examining the plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.                   
  "What do you think of it, Prince?" Dessalles ventured to ask.             
  "I? I?..." said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not           
taking his eyes from the plan of the building.                              
  "Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that..."        
                                                    {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 30}
  "Ha ha ha! The theater of war!" said the prince. "I have said and         
still say that the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never        
get beyond the Niemen."                                                     
  Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of           
the Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess          
Mary, forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought that      
what her father was saying was correct.                                     
  "When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they         
could fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently thinking of the      
campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. "Bennigsen should have      
advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different      
turn..."                                                                    
  "But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the letter mentions              
Vitebsk...."                                                                
  "Ah, the letter? Yes..." replied the prince peevishly. "Yes...            
yes..." His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused.           
"Yes, he writes that the French were beaten at... at... what river          
is it?"                                                                     
                                                    {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 35}
  Dessalles dropped his eyes.                                               
  "The prince says nothing about that," he remarked gently.                 
  "Doesn't he? But I didn't invent it myself."                              
  No one spoke for a long time.                                             
  "Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich," he suddenly went on,             
raising his head and pointing to the plan of the building, "tell me         
how you mean to alter it...."                                               
                                                    {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 40}
  Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking      
to him about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and               
Dessalles and went to his own room.                                         
  Princess Mary saw Dessalles' embarrassed and astonished look fixed        
on her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that         
her father had forgotten his son's letter on the drawing-room table;        
but she was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the            
reason of his confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think           
about it.                                                                   
  In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince, came to             
Princess Mary for Prince Andrew's letter which had been forgotten in        
the drawing room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to           
her to do so, ventured to ask him what her father was doing.                
  "Always busy," replied Michael Ivanovich with a respectfully              
ironic smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. "He's worrying        
very much about the new building. He has been reading a little, but         
now"- Michael Ivanovich went on, lowering his voice- "now he's at           
his desk, busy with his will, I expect." (One of the prince's favorite      
occupations of late had been the preparation of some papers he meant        
to leave at his death and which he called his "will.")                      
  "And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?" asked Princess Mary.            
                                                    {BK10|CH2 ^paragraph 45}
  "Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time."                    
                                                                            
BK10|CH3                                                                    
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the letter, the         
old prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was               
sitting at his open bureau with screened candles, holding a paper in        
his outstretched hand, and in a somewhat dramatic attitude was reading      
his manuscript- his "Remarks" as he termed it- which was to be              
transmitted to the Emperor after his death.                                 
  When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in the prince's eyes      
evoked by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had      
been written. He took the letter from Michael Ivanovich's hand, put it      
in his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who had         
long been waiting.                                                          
  The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolensk and,             
walking up and down the room past Alpatych who stood by the door, he        
gave his instructions.                                                      
  "First, notepaper- do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample,           
gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing          
wax, as in Michael Ivanovich's list."                                       
  He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes.                
                                                     {BK10|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  "Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed."            
  Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to      
be of a special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather        
case had to be ordered to keep the "will" in.                               
  The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and still the            
prince did not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed           
his eyes, and dozed off. Alpatych made a slight movement.                   
  "Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I'll send after you."           
  Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into      
it, fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at           
the table to write to the governor.                                         
                                                    {BK10|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished      
to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing      
thoughts came to him in bed. So he called Tikhon and went through           
the rooms with him to show him where to set up the bed for that night.      
  He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed                 
unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study.      
That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive          
thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory                 
everywhere, but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was         
better than other places: he had never slept there yet.                     
  With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the bedstead and             
began putting it up.                                                        
  "That's not right! That's not right!" cried the prince, and               
himself pushed it a few inches from the corner and then closer in           
again.                                                                      
  "Well, at last I've finished, now I'll rest," thought the prince,         
and let Tikhon undress him.                                                 
                                                    {BK10|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself          
of his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on         
the bed, and appeared to be meditating as he looked contemptuously          
at his withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only deferring      
the moment of making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on      
the bed. "Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and you         
would release me!" thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that      
effort for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had          
he done so before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards            
beneath him as if it were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened      
to him almost every night. He opened his eyes as they were closing.         
  "No peace, damn them!" he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. "Ah      
yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was         
keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them.      
No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary          
talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something.                 
Something in my pocket- can't remember..."                                  
  "Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?"                               
  "About Prince Michael..."                                                 
  "Be quiet, quiet!" The prince slapped his hand on the table. "Yes, I      
know, Prince Andrew's letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said         
something about Vitebsk. Now I'll read it."                                 
                                                    {BK10|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table- on which           
stood a glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle- moved close to           
the bed, and putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in        
the stillness of the night, reading it by the faint light under the         
green shade, did he grasp its meaning for a moment.                         
  "The French at Vitebsk, in four days' march they may be at Smolensk;      
perhaps are already there! Tikhon!" Tikhon jumped up. "No, no, I don't      
want anything!" he shouted.                                                 
  He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And          
there rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian      
camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face,      
vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin's gaily colored tent, and a           
burning sense of jealousy of "the favorite" agitated him now as             
strongly as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that      
first meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather          
sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile        
and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that         
same face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zubov            
over her coffin about his right to kiss her hand.                           
  "Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with        
all the present! Quicker, quicker- and that they should leave me in         
peace!"                                                                     
                                                                            
BK10|CH4                                                                    
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's estate, lay forty miles east      
from Smolensk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.                   
  The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to                 
Alpatych, Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that,      
as the prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure           
his safety, though from Prince Andrew's letter it was evident that          
to remain at Bald Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised         
her to send a letter by Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at              
Smolensk, asking him to let her know the state of affairs and the           
extent of the danger to which Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles             
wrote this letter to the Governor for Princess Mary, she signed it,         
and it was given to Alpatych with instructions to hand it to the            
Governor and to come back as quickly as possible if there was danger.       
  Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a white beaver hat-      
a present from the prince- and carrying a stick as the prince did,          
went out accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready        
harnessed to a small conveyance with a leather hood.                        
  The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness           
stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive        
with ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpatych liked to have them.      
His satellites- the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery         
maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and            
various domestic serfs- were seeing him off.                                
  His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on        
and behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle,        
and one of the coachmen helped him into the vehicle.                        
                                                     {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  "There! There! Women's fuss! Women, women!" said Alpatych, puffing        
and speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the        
trap.                                                                       
  After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpatych,        
not trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald          
head and crossed himself three times.                                       
  "If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych! For Christ's          
sake think of us!" cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war           
and the enemy.                                                              
  "Women, women! Women's fuss!" muttered Alpatych to himself and            
started on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye           
and the still-green, thickly growing oats, and at other quite black         
fields just being plowed a second time.                                     
  As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year's splendid crop      
of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there            
were already being reaped, made his calculations as to the sowing           
and the harvest, and asked himself whether he had not forgotten any of      
the prince's orders.                                                        
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town         
toward evening on the fourth of August.                                     
  Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on         
the road. As he approached Smolensk he heard the sounds of distant          
firing, but these did not impress him. What struck him most was the         
sight of a splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched and      
which was being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder.            
This fact impressed Alpatych, but in thinking about his own business        
he soon forgot it.                                                          
  All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been         
bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went beyond that            
limit. Everything not connected with the execution of the prince's          
orders did not interest and did not even exist for Alpatych.                
  On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of August he put        
up in the Gachina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by             
Ferapontov, where he had been in the habit of putting up for the            
last thirty years. Some thirty years ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych's          
advice, had bought a wood from the prince, had begun to trade, and now      
had a house, an inn, and a corn dealer's shop in that province. He was      
a stout, dark, red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a         
broad knob of a nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and      
a round belly.                                                              
  Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov was standing        
before his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpatych he         
went up to him.                                                             
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  "You're welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving the town, but you      
have come to it," said he.                                                  
  "Why are they leaving the town?" asked Alpatych.                          
  "That's what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French."      
  "Women's fuss, women's fuss!" said Alpatych.                              
  "Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is: orders have            
been given not to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants      
are asking three rubles for carting- it isn't Christian!"                   
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for      
hay for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed.             
  All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning              
Alpatych donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on               
business. It was a sunny morning and by eight o'clock it was already        
hot. "A good day for harvesting," thought Alpatych.                         
  From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At        
eight o'clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of               
musketry. Many people were hurrying through the streets and there were      
many soldiers, but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at        
their shops, and service was being held in the churches as usual.           
Alpatych went to the shops, to government offices, to the post office,      
and to the Governor's. In the offices and shops and at the post office      
everyone was talking about the army and about the enemy who was             
already attacking the town, everybody was asking what should be             
done, and all were trying to calm one another.                              
  In front of the Governor's house Alpatych found a large number of         
people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor's. At the        
porch he met two of the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This            
man, an ex-captain of police, was saying angrily:                           
  "It's no joke, you know! It's all very well if you're single. 'One        
man though undone is but one,' as the proverb says, but with                
thirteen in your family and all the property... They've brought us          
to utter ruin! What sort of governors are they to do that? They             
ought to be hanged- the brigands!..."                                       
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  "Oh come, that's enough!" said the other.                                 
  "What do I care? Let him hear! We're not dogs," said the                  
ex-captain of police, and looking round he noticed Alpatych.                
  "Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?"                             
  "To see the Governor by his excellency's order," answered                 
Alpatych, lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the          
bosom of his coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince.... He      
has ordered me to inquire into the position of affairs," he added.          
  "Yes, go and find out!" shouted the angry gentleman. "They've             
brought things to such a pass that there are no carts or                    
anything!... There it is again, do you hear?" said he, pointing in the      
direction whence came the sounds of firing.                                 
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  "They've brought us all to ruin... the brigands!" he repeated, and        
descended the porch steps.                                                  
  Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were      
tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another.           
The door of the Governor's room opened and they all rose and moved          
forward. An official ran out, said some words to a merchant, called         
a stout official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and        
vanished again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and          
questions addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time the        
official came out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of           
his buttoned coat, and handed him two letters.                              
  "To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkonski,"        
he announced with such solemnity and significance that the official         
turned to him and took the letters.                                         
  A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych and hurriedly          
said to him:                                                                
  "Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on           
the highest instructions- here..." and he handed a paper to                 
Alpatych. "Still, as the prince is unwell my advice is that they            
should go to Moscow. I am just starting myself. Inform them..."             
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 35}
  But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into      
the room and began to say something in French. The Governor's face          
expressed terror.                                                           
  "Go," he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began questioning        
the officer.                                                                
  Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpatych when          
he came out of the Governor's room. Involuntarily listening now to the      
firing, which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength,              
Alpatych hurried to his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor        
said this:                                                                  
-                                                                           
  "I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the slightest           
danger as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with            
any. I from the one side and Prince Bagration from the other are            
marching to unite our forces before Smolensk, which junction will be        
effected on the 22nd instant, and both armies with their united forces      
will defend our compatriots of the province entrusted to your care          
till our efforts shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland,      
or till the last warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From            
this you will see that you have a perfect right to reassure the             
inhabitants of Smolensk, for those defended by two such brave armies        
may feel assured of victory." (Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to        
Baron Asch, the civil governor of Smolensk, 1812.)                          
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 40}
-                                                                           
  People were anxiously roaming about the streets.                          
  Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept      
emerging from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets.          
Loaded carts stood at the house next to Ferapontov's and women were         
wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round      
barking in front of the harnessed horses.                                   
  Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went        
straight to the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman           
was asleep. He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the          
passage. From the host's room came the sounds of a child crying, the        
despairing sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of                
Ferapontov. The cook began running hither and thither in the passage        
like a frightened hen, just as Alpatych entered.                            
  "He's done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged      
her about so!..."                                                           
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 45}
  "What for?" asked Alpatych.                                               
  "She kept begging to go away. She's a woman! 'Take me away,' says         
she, 'don't let me perish with my little children! Folks,' she says,        
'are all gone, so why,' she says, 'don't we go?' And he began               
beating and pulling her about so!"                                          
  At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to      
hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper's, where      
he had left his purchases.                                                  
  "You brute, you murderer!" screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a        
baby in her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through         
the door at that moment and down the steps into the yard.                   
  Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych adjusted his        
waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the        
opposite room.                                                              
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 50}
  "Going already?" said he.                                                 
  Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his            
packages and asked how much he owed.                                        
  "We'll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor's?" asked           
Ferapontov. "What has been decided?"                                        
  Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him anything              
definite.                                                                   
  "With our business, how can we get away?" said Ferapontov. "We'd          
have to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh and I tell them           
they're not Christians to ask it! Selivanov, now, did a good stroke         
last Thursday- sold flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will           
you have some tea?" he added.                                               
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 55}
  While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and Ferapontov over        
their tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather      
for harvesting.                                                             
  "Well, it seems to be getting quieter," remarked Ferapontov,              
finishing his third cup of tea and getting up. "Ours must have got the      
best of it. The orders were not to let them in. So we're in force,          
it seems.... They say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove            
them into the river Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one        
day."                                                                       
  Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who           
had come in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels,        
hoofs, and bells was heard from the gateway as a little trap passed         
out.                                                                        
  It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in               
shadow, the other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych looked out of      
the window and went to the door. Suddenly the strange sound of a            
far-off whistling and thud was heard, followed by a boom of cannon          
blending into a dull roar that set the windows rattling.                    
  He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the         
bridge. From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of          
cannon balls and bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds      
were hardly heard in comparison with the noise of the firing outside        
the town and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town      
was being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which Napoleon had         
ordered up after four o'clock. The people did not at once realize           
the meaning of this bombardment.                                            
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 60}
  At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused           
curiosity. Ferapontov's wife, who till then had not ceased wailing          
under the shed, became quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the      
gate, listening to the sounds and looking in silence at the people.         
  The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively               
curiosity everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they        
flew over their heads. Several people came round the corner talking         
eagerly.                                                                    
  "What force!" remarked one. "Knocked the roof and ceiling all to          
splinters!"                                                                 
  "Routed up the earth like a pig," said another.                           
  "That's grand, it bucks one up!" laughed the first. "Lucky you            
jumped aside, or it would have wiped you out!"                              
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 65}
  Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had         
fallen on a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now      
with the swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the              
agreeable intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people's heads         
incessantly, but not one fell close by, they all flew over. Alpatych        
was getting into his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.                 
  "What are you staring at?" he shouted to the cook, who in her red         
skirt, with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped        
to the corner to listen to what was being said.                             
  "What marvels!" she exclaimed, but hearing her master's voice she         
turned back. pulling down her tucked-up skirt.                              
  Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping         
downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the          
street, something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke.           
  "Scoundrel, what are you doing?" shouted the innkeeper, rushing to        
the cook.                                                                   
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 70}
  At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different      
sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently        
with pale faces round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was         
her wailing.                                                                
  "Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don't let me die! My good           
souls!..."                                                                  
  Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her      
thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen.        
Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov's wife and children and the house        
porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns,         
the whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook,          
which rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The          
mistress rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the           
cellar asked in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband           
who had remained in the street. A shopman who entered told her that         
her husband had gone with others to the cathedral, whence they were         
fetching the wonder-working icon of Smolensk.                               
  Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych left the cellar      
and stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was      
clouded with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon      
shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a         
hush seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of            
footsteps, the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle of fires         
which seemed widespread everywhere. The cook's moans had now subsided.      
On two sides black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the         
fires. Through the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or           
ran confusedly in different directions like ants from a ruined              
ant-hill. Several of them ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's      
eyes. Alpatych went out to the gate. A retreating regiment,                 
thronging and hurrying, blocked the street.                                 
  Noticing him, an officer said: "The town is being abandoned. Get          
away, get away!" and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted:                
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 75}
  "I'll teach you to run into the yards!"                                   
  Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him        
to set off. Ferapontov's whole household came out too, following            
Alpatych and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then,        
suddenly began to wail as they looked at the fires- the smoke and even      
the flames of which could be seen in the failing twilight- and as if        
in reply the same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts of         
the street. Inside the shed Alpatych and the coachman arranged the          
tangled reins and traces of their horses with trembling hands.              
  As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers          
in Ferapontov's open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and        
knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapontov              
returned and entered his shop. On seeing the soldiers he was about          
to shout at them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair,          
burst into sobs and laughter:                                               
  "Loot everything, lads! Don't let those devils get it!" he cried,         
taking some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.        
  Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on         
filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him:           
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 80}
  "Russia is done for!" he cried. "Alpatych, I'll set the place on          
fire myself. We're done for!..." and Ferapontov ran into the yard.          
  Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking      
it completely, so that Alpatych could not pass out and had to wait.         
Ferapontov's wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting          
till it was it was possible to drive out.                                   
  Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone        
out amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the          
Dnieper Alpatych's cart and that of the innkeeper's wife, which were        
slowly moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had          
to stop. In a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had        
stopped, a house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already         
burning itself out. The flames now died down and were lost in the           
black smoke, now suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with        
strange distinctness the faces of the people crowding at the                
crossroads. Black figures flitted about before the fire, and through        
the incessant crackling of the flames talking and shouting could be         
heard. Seeing that his trap would not be able to move on for some           
time, Alpatych got down and turned into the side street to look at the      
fire. Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards near         
it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging burning      
beams into another yard across the street, while others carried             
bundles of hay.                                                             
  Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn             
which was blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back          
wall had fallen in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters         
were alight. The crowd was evidently watching for the roof to fall in,      
and Alpatych watched for it too.                                            
  "Alpatych!" a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.                 
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 85}
  "Mercy on us! Your excellency!" answered Alpatych, immediately            
recognizing the voice of his young prince.                                  
  Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was          
looking at Alpatych from the back of the crowd.                             
  "Why are you here?" he asked.                                             
  "Your... your excellency," stammered Alpatych and broke into sobs.        
"Are we really lost? Master!..."                                            
  "Why are you here?" Prince Andrew repeated.                               
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 90}
  At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master's         
pale worn face. Alpatych told how he had been sent there and how            
difficult it was to get away.                                               
  "Are we really quite lost, your excellency?" he asked again.              
  Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his        
knee began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his         
sister:                                                                     
-                                                                           
  "Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the          
enemy within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at         
once when you will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyazh."            
                                                    {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 95}
-                                                                           
  Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych, he told him how      
to arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the      
boy's tutor, and how and where to let him know immediately. Before          
he had had time to finish giving these instructions, a chief of             
staff followed by a suite galloped up to him.                               
  "You are a colonel?" shouted the chief of staff with a German             
accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. "Houses are set on            
fire in your presence and you stand by! What does this mean? You            
will answer for it!" shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the             
chief of staff of the commander of the left flank of the infantry of        
the first army, a place, as Berg said, "very agreeable and well en          
evidence."                                                                  
  Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to      
Alpatych.                                                                   
  "So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by        
the tenth I don't receive news that they have all got away I shall          
have to throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills."                 
                                                   {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 100}
  "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!"                          
                                                   {BK10|CH4 ^paragraph 105}
  "That's the owner himself," cried several voices.                         
  "Well then," continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, "report to them as      
I have told you"; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute          
beside him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street.             
                                                                            
BK10|CH5                                                                    
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the            
enemy. On the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was      
marching along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills.          
Heat and drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day          
fleecy clouds floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the            
sun, but toward evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in            
reddish-brown mist. Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The         
unreaped corn was scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up.        
The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched            
meadows. Only at night and in the forests while the dew lasted was          
there any freshness. But on the road, the highroad along which the          
troops marched, there was no such freshness even at night or when           
the road passed through the forest; the dew was imperceptible on the        
sandy dust churned up more than six inches deep. As soon as day dawned      
the march began. The artillery and baggage wagons moved noiselessly         
through the deep dust that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and         
the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft, choking, hot dust that           
never cooled even at night. Some of this dust was kneaded by the            
feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a cloud over the         
troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and worst of all        
in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that road.           
The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and             
through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked      
eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded      
sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless               
atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses           
and mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to           
the wells and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.            
  Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of         
that regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving        
and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolensk and its           
abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger             
against the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely             
devoted to the affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to      
his men and officers. In the regiment they called him "our prince,"         
were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to         
those of his regiment, to Timokhin and the like- people quite new to        
him, belonging to a different world and who could not know and              
understand his past. As soon as he came across a former acquaintance        
or anyone from the staff, he bristled up immediately and grew               
spiteful, ironical, and contemptuous. Everything that reminded him          
of his past was repugnant to him, and so in his relations with that         
former circle he confined himself to trying to do his duty and not          
to be unfair.                                                               
  In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to        
Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolensk on the          
sixth of August (he considered that it could and should have been           
defended) and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow,              
abandoning to pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built      
and peopled. But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew        
had something to think about entirely apart from general questions.         
Two days previously he had received news that his father, son, and          
sister had left for Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do      
at Bald Hills, Prince Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment         
his own grief decided that he must ride there.                              
  He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on           
the march, rode to his father's estate where he had been born and           
spent his childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to        
be dozens of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it         
with wooden beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul        
about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and            
half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He      
rode to the keeper's lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of           
the drive and the door stood open. Grass had already begun to grow          
on the garden paths, and horses and calves were straying in the             
English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass      
panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and        
others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied.      
Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden,      
he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the          
plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom            
Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was               
sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast shoe.                       
  He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting        
on the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him           
strips of bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a          
magnolia.                                                                   
                                                     {BK10|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old              
garden had been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were               
wandering in front of the house among the rosebushes. The shutters          
were all closed, except at one window which was open. A little serf         
boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran into the house. Alpatych, having sent        
his family away, was alone at Bald Hills and was sitting indoors            
reading the Lives of the Saints. On hearing that Prince Andrew had          
come, he went out with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning his coat,      
and, hastily stepping up, without a word began weeping and kissing          
Prince Andrew's knee.                                                       
  Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to              
report on the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable         
had been removed to Bogucharovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also         
been carted away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpatych            
said there had been a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered      
by the troops and mown down while still green. The peasants were            
ruined; some of them too had gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained.      
  Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:                     
  "When did my father and sister leave?" meaning when did they leave        
for Moscow.                                                                 
  Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for      
Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again            
went into details concerning the estate management, asking for              
instructions.                                                               
                                                    {BK10|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for          
them? We have still six hundred quarters left," he inquired.                
  "What am I to say to him?" thought Prince Andrew, looking down on         
the old man's bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the                
expression on his face that the old man himself understood how              
untimely such questions were and only asked them to allay his grief.        
  "Yes, let them have it," replied Prince Andrew.                           
  "If you noticed some disorder in the garden," said Alpatych, "it was      
impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent the      
night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their              
commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it."                       
  "Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy      
occupies the place?" asked Prince Andrew.                                   
                                                    {BK10|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and             
suddenly with a solemn gesture raised his arm.                              
  "He is my refuge! His will be done!" he exclaimed.                        
  A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow          
toward the prince.                                                          
  "Well, good-by!" said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpatych.            
"You must go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go      
to the Ryazan estate or to the one near Moscow."                            
  Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew's leg and burst into sobs. Gently         
disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the         
avenue at a gallop.                                                         
                                                    {BK10|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly        
impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last          
on which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running         
out from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked      
from the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young          
master, the elder one frightened look clutched her younger companion        
by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick      
up some green plums they had dropped.                                       
  Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them      
see that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty                
frightened little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt          
an irresistible desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief      
came over him when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of        
other human interests entirely aloof from his own and just as               
legitimate as those that occupied him. Evidently these girls                
passionately desired one thing- to carry away and eat those green           
plums without being caught- and Prince Andrew shared their wish for         
the success of their enterprise. He could not resist looking at them        
once more. Believing their danger past, they sprang from their              
ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill little voices and          
holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned feet scampered         
merrily and quickly across the meadow grass.                                
  Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the             
dusty highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from         
Bald Hills he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment          
at its halting place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one            
o'clock. The sun, a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his      
back intolerably through his black coat. The dust always hung               
motionless above the buzz of talk that came from the resting troops.        
There was no wind. As he crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the          
ooze and freshness of the pond. He longed to get into that water,           
however dirty it might be, and he glanced round at the pool from            
whence came sounds of shrieks and laughter. The small, muddy, green         
pond had risen visibly more than a foot, flooding the dam, because          
it was full of the naked white bodies of soldiers with brick-red            
hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing about in it. All this           
naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking, floundered about in        
that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering can, and the              
suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered it specially      
pathetic.                                                                   
  One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince           
Andrew knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed          
himself, stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water;        
another, a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood        
up to his waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure         
and snorted with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head          
with hands blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men                
slapping one another, yelling, and puffing.                                 
  Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was            
healthy, white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timokhin, with his red         
little nose, standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt          
confused at seeing the prince, but made up his mind to address him          
nevertheless.                                                               
                                                    {BK10|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  "It's very nice, your excellency! Wouldn't you like to?" said he.         
  "It's dirty," replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.                    
  "We'll clear it out for you in a minute," said Timokhin, and,             
still undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond.                  
  "The prince wants to bathe."                                              
  "What prince? Ours?" said many voices, and the men were in such           
haste to clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He               
decided that he would rather himself with water in the barn.                
                                                    {BK10|CH5 ^paragraph 30}
  "Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!" he thought, and he looked at his own      
naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust         
and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that      
immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.                 
-                                                                           
  On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as follows from           
his quarters at Mikhaylovna on the Smolensk road:                           
-                                                                           
  Dear Count Alexis Andreevich- (He was writing to Arakcheev but            
knew that his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore            
weighed every word in it to the best of his ability.)                       
                                                    {BK10|CH5 ^paragraph 35}
  I expect the Minister [Barclay de Tolly] has already reported the         
abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and           
the whole army is in despair that this most important place has been        
wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most              
urgently and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to             
consent. I swear to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as      
never before and might have lost half his army but could not have           
taken Smolensk. Our troops fought, and are fighting, as never               
before. With fifteen thousand men I held the enemy at bay for               
thirty-five hours and beat him; but he would not hold out even for          
fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain on our army, and as for          
him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If he reports that our          
losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about four thousand, not         
more, and not even that; but even were they ten thousand, that's            
war! But the enemy has lost masses...                                       
  What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They        
would have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water         
for men or horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but            
suddenly sent instructions that he was retiring that night. We              
cannot fight in this way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow...       
  There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you      
should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats!        
You would set all Russia against you and every one of us would feel         
ashamed to wear the uniform. If it has come to this- we must fight          
as long as Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand...         
  One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may            
perhaps be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad        
but execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole                
country.... I am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing           
boldly. It is clear that the man who advocates the conclusion of a          
peace, and that the Minister should command the army, does not love         
our sovereign and desires the ruin of us all. So I write you                
frankly: call out the militia. For the Minister is leading these            
visitors after him to Moscow in a most masterly way. The whole army         
feels great suspicion of the Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is          
said to be more Napoleon's man than ours, and he is always advising         
the Minister. I am not merely civil to him but obey him like a              
corporal, though I am his senior. This is painful, but, loving my           
benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am sorry for the Emperor         
that he entrusts our fine army to such as he. Consider that on our          
retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the hospital more than          
fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would not have               
happened. Tell me, for God's sake, what will Russia, our mother             
Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning           
our good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings      
of hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and          
of whom are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is               
vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The      
whole army bewails it and calls down curses upon him...                     
                                                                            
BK10|CH6                                                                    
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of           
human life one may discriminate between those in which substance            
prevails and those in which form prevails. To the latter- as                
distinguished from village, country, provincial, or even Moscow             
life- we may allot Petersburg life, and especially the life of its          
salons. That life of the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805          
we had made peace and had again quarreled with Bonaparte and had            
made constitutions and unmade them again, but the salons of Anna            
Pavlovna Helene remained just as they had been- the one seven and           
the other five years before. At Anna Pavlovna's they talked with            
perplexity of Bonaparte's successes just as before and saw in them and      
in the subservience shown to him by the European sovereigns a               
malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was to cause                 
unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna                
Pavlovna was the representative. And in Helene's salon, which               
Rumyantsev himself honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a           
remarkably intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in          
1812 as in 1808 of the "great nation" and the "great man," and              
regretted our rupture with France, a rupture which, according to them,      
ought to be promptly terminated by peace.                                   
  Of late, since the Emperor's return from the army, there had been         
some excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some                 
demonstrations of hostility to one another, but each camp retained its      
own tendency. In Anna Pavlovna's circle only those Frenchmen were           
admitted who were deep-rooted legitimists, and patriotic views were         
expressed to the effect that one ought not to go to the French theater      
and that to maintain the French troupe was costing the government as        
much as a whole army corps. The progress of the war was eagerly             
followed, and only the reports most flattering to our army were             
circulated. In the French circle of Helene and Rumyantsev the               
reports of the cruelty of the enemy and of the war were contradicted        
and all Napoleon's attempts at conciliation were discussed. In that         
circle they discountenanced those who advised hurried preparations for      
a removal to Kazan of the court and the girls' educational                  
establishments under the patronage of the Dowager Empress. In Helene's      
circle the war in general was regarded as a series of formal                
demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the view             
prevailed expressed by Bilibin- who now in Petersburg was quite at          
home in Helene's house, which every clever man was obliged to visit-        
that not by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters be         
settled. In that circle the Moscow enthusiasm- news of which had            
reached Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor's return- was            
ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly, though with much caution.        
  Anna Pavlovna's circle on the contrary was enraptured by this             
enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the           
ancients. Prince Vasili, who still occupied his former important            
posts, formed a connecting link between these two circles. He               
visited his "good friend Anna Pavlovna" as well as his daughter's           
"diplomatic salon," and often in his constant comings and goings            
between the two camps became confused and said at Helene's what he          
should have said at Anna Pavlovna's and vice versa.                         
  Soon after the Emperor's return Prince Vasili in a conversation           
about the war at Anna Pavlovna's severely condemned Barclay de              
Tolly, but was undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander          
in chief. One of the visitors, usually spoken of as "a man of great         
merit," having described how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly        
chosen chief of the Petersburg militia, presiding over the                  
enrollment of recruits at the Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest      
that Kutuzov would be the man to satisfy all requirements.                  
  Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutuzov had done      
nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.                                    
                                                     {BK10|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  "I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility," Prince        
Vasili interrupted, "but they did not listen to me. I told them his         
election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They         
did not listen to me.                                                       
  "It's all this mania for opposition," he went on. "And who for? It        
is all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those               
Muscovites," Prince Vasili continued, forgetting for a moment that          
though at Helene's one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at            
Anna Pavlovna's one had to be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved           
his mistake at once. "Now, is it suitable that Count Kutuzov, the           
oldest general in Russia, should preside at that tribunal? He will get      
nothing for his pains! How could they make a man commander in chief         
who cannot mount a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the        
very worst morals! A good reputation he made for himself at Bucharest!      
I don't speak of his capacity as a general, but at a time like this         
how they appoint they appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively         
blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see anything.          
To play blindman's bluff? He can't see at all!"                             
  No one replied to his remarks.                                            
  This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the           
twenty-ninth of July Kutuzov received the title of Prince. This             
might indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasili's      
opinion continued to be correct though he was not now in any hurry          
to express it. But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting          
of Field Marshal Saltykov, Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin, and            
Kochubey met to consider the progress of the war. This committee            
came to the conclusion that our failures were due to a want of unity        
in the command and though the members of the committee were aware of        
the Emperor's dislike of Kutuzov, after a short deliberation they           
agreed to advise his appointment as commander in chief. That same           
day Kutuzov was appointed commander in chief with full powers over the      
armies and over the whole region occupied by them.                          
  On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna Pavlovna's again met         
the "man of great merit." The latter was very attentive to Anna             
Pavlovna because he wanted to be appointed director of one of the           
educational establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasili entered the      
room with the air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object          
of his desires.                                                             
                                                    {BK10|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is field             
marshal! All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At      
last we have a man!" said he, glancing sternly and significantly round      
at everyone in the drawing room.                                            
  The "man of great merit," despite his desire to obtain the post of        
director, could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasili of his former      
opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasili in Anna                  
Pavlovna's drawing room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself who had          
received the news with delight, he could not resist the temptation.         
  "But, Prince, they say he is blind!" said he, reminding Prince            
Vasili of his own words.                                                    
  "Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough," said Prince Vasili rapidly,          
in a deep voice and with a slight cough- the voice and cough with           
which he was wont to dispose of all difficulties.                           
  "He sees well enough," he added. "And what I am so pleased about,"        
he went on, "is that our sovereign has given him full powers over           
all the armies and the whole region- powers no commander in chief ever      
had before. He is a second autocrat," he concluded with a victorious        
smile.                                                                      
                                                    {BK10|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  "God grant it! God grant it!" said Anna Pavlovna.                         
  The "man of great merit," who was still a novice in court circles,        
wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by defending her former position on        
this question, observed:                                                    
  "It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutuzov those          
powers. They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read,            
when he said to Kutuzov: 'Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you         
this honor.'                                                                
  "Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech," said Anna Pavlovna.      
  "Oh, no, no!" warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who would not now yield      
Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutuzov was not only admirable            
himself, but was adored by everybody. "No, that's impossible," said         
he, "for our sovereign appreciated him so highly before."                   
                                                    {BK10|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  "God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real power and does           
not allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel," observed Anna Pavlovna.      
  Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasili said in a        
whisper:                                                                    
  "I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute condition that        
the Tsarevich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to      
the Emperor?"                                                               
  And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by      
Kutuzov to the Emperor. "I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor      
reward him if he does right."                                               
  "Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known him a long           
time!"                                                                      
                                                    {BK10|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  "They even say," remarked the "man of great merit" who did not yet        
possess courtly tact, "that his excellency made it an express               
condition that the sovereign himself should not be with the army."          
  As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna Pavlovna              
turned away from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at        
his naivete.                                                                
                                                                            
BK10|CH7                                                                    
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already          
passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow.               
Napoleon's historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to        
justify his hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against      
his will. He is as right as other historians who look for the               
explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as             
right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn        
to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law      
of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for           
events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in,            
confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having lost a game is        
sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made           
and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each         
stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his          
moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays            
attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more         
complex than this is the game of war, which occurs under certain            
limits of time, and where it is not one will that manipulates lifeless      
objects, but everything results from innumerable conflicts of               
various wills!                                                              
  After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma,      
and then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that owing to a             
conjunction of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give        
battle till they reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From          
Vyazma Napoleon ordered a direct advance on Moscow.                         
  Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree         
des peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme      
de pagodes chinoises,* this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no           
rest. On the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light      
bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his          
pages, and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind      
to question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by         
Lelorgne d'Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a              
gallop and reined in his horse with an amused expression.                   
-                                                                           
  *"Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the sacred            
city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its innumerable churches            
shaped like Chinese pagodas."                                               
                                                     {BK10|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  "Well?" asked Napoleon.                                                   
  "One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up          
with the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in         
chief. He is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."                           
  Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and             
bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several             
adjutants galloped off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov      
had handed over to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's              
jacket and on a French cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face.        
Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began questioning him.            
  "You are a Cossack?"                                                      
                                                    {BK10|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."                                             
  "The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's          
plain appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental      
mind the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the      
incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality      
Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master              
dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of            
chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him              
prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who         
have seen all sorts of things, consider it necessary to do                  
everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready to render any sort          
of service to their master, and are keen at guessing their master's         
baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and pettiness.          
  Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had         
easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed        
but merely did his utmost to gain his new master's favor.                   
  He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence         
could no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with      
the rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant      
major or Napoleon could deprive him of.                                     
  So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the           
orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the         
Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed        
up his eyes and considered.                                                 
                                                    {BK10|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see            
cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.        
  "It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon,        
yours will win. That's right. But if three days pass, then after that,      
well, then that same battle will not soon be over."                         
  Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon         
thus: "If a battle takes place within the next three days the French        
will win, but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did           
not smile, though he was evidently in high good humor, and he               
ordered these words to be repeated.                                         
  Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending           
not to know who Napoleon was, added:                                        
  "We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in      
the world, but we are a different matter..."- without knowing why or        
how this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.                 
                                                    {BK10|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase,           
and Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty                    
interlocutor smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence,      
Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news          
that he was talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who        
had written his immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would           
affect this enfant du Don.*                                                 
-                                                                           
  *"Child of the Don."                                                      
-                                                                           
  The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.                           
                                                    {BK10|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and            
that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new             
masters promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his      
eyes wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken          
to be whipped. "As soon as Napoleon's interpreter had spoken," says         
Thiers, "the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word,      
but rode on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached         
him across the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly          
arrested and replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration.          
Napoleon, after making the Cossack a present, had him set free like         
a bird restored to its native fields."                                      
  Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his          
imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped          
to our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but      
that he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place        
he did not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth                
telling. He found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating         
with Platov's detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas          
Rostov, quartered at Yankovo. Rostov was just mounting to go for a          
ride round the neighboring villages with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka            
have another horse and took him along with him.                             
                                                                            
BK10|CH8                                                                    
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as Prince Andrew        
supposed.                                                                   
  After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old prince suddenly        
seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be            
called up from the villages and armed, and wrote a letter to the            
commander in chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at          
Bald Hills to the last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the           
commander in chief's discretion to take measures or not for the             
defense of Bald Hills, where one of Russia's oldest generals would          
be captured or killed, and he announced to his household that he would      
remain at Bald Hills.                                                       
  But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for the                 
departure of the princess and Dessalles with the little prince to           
Bogucharovo and thence to Moscow. Princess Mary, alarmed by her             
father's feverish and sleepless activity after his previous apathy,         
could not bring herself to leave him alone and for the first time in        
her life ventured to disobey him. She refused to go away and her            
father's fury broke over her in a terrible storm. He repeated every         
injustice he had ever inflicted on her. Trying to convict her, he told      
her she had worn him out, had caused his quarrel with his son, had          
harbored nasty suspicions of him, making it the object of her life          
to poison his existence, and he drove her from his study telling her        
that if she did not go away it was all the same to him. He declared         
that he did not wish to remember her existence and warned her not to        
dare to let him see her. The fact that he did not, as she had               
feared, order her to be carried away by force but only told her not to      
let him see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof that in      
the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home and had         
not gone away.                                                              
  The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old prince donned         
his full uniform and prepared to visit the commander in chief. His          
caleche was already at the door. Princess Mary saw him walk out of the      
house in his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden          
to review his armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by the window      
listening to his voice which reached her from the garden. Suddenly          
several men came running up the avenue with frightened faces.               
  Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path,        
and into the avenue. A large crowd of militiamen and domestics were         
moving toward her, and in their midst several men were supporting by        
the armpits and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and            
decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that        
fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree avenue,        
could not be sure what change there was in his face. All she could see      
was that his former stern and determined expression had altered to one      
of timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he moved his             
helpless lips and made a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out        
what he wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on         
the very couch he had so feared of late.                                    
                                                     {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him and said            
that the prince had had seizure a paralyzing his right side.                
  It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and      
next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying      
him.                                                                        
  By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and the little            
prince had already left for Moscow.                                         
  For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis in the           
new house Prince Andrew had built at Bogucharovo, ever in the same          
state, getting neither better nor worse. He was unconscious and lay         
like a distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and          
lips twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood         
what was going on around him or not. One thing was certain- that he         
was suffering and wished to say something. But what it was, no one          
could tell: it might be some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man,          
or it might relate to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns.       
  The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was           
due to physical causes; but Princess Mary thought he wished to tell         
her something, and the fact that her presence always increased his          
restlessness confirmed her opinion.                                         
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally. There was        
no hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to travel, it would not      
do to let him die on the road. "Would it not be better if the end           
did come, the very end?" Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night and         
day, hardly sleeping at all, she watched him and, terrible to say,          
often watched him not with hope of finding signs of improvement but         
wishing to find symptoms of the approach of the end.                        
  Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet      
there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that           
since her father's illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed      
with him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires           
and hopes that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened.      
Thoughts that had not entered her mind for years- thoughts of a life        
free from the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and      
of family happiness- floated continually in her imagination like            
temptations of the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions         
continually recurred to her as to how she would order her life now,         
after that. These were temptations of the devil and Princess Mary knew      
it. She knew that the sole weapon against him was prayer, and she           
tried to pray. She assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons,      
repeated the words of a prayer, but she could not pray. She felt            
that a different world had now taken possession of her- the life of         
a world of strenuous and free activity, quite opposed to the spiritual      
world in which till now she had been confined and in which her              
greatest comfort had been prayer. She could not pray, could not             
weep, and worldly cares took possession of her.                             
  It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo. News of the           
approach of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten         
miles from Bogucharovo, a homestead had been looted by French               
marauders.                                                                  
  The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince; the            
provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary        
to persuade her to get away as quickly as possible, and the head of         
the rural police having come to Bogucharovo urged the same thing,           
saying that the French were only some twenty-five miles away, that          
French proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the      
princess did not take her father away before the fifteenth, he could        
not answer for the consequences.                                            
  The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares of              
preparation and giving orders, for which everyone came to her,              
occupied her all day. She spent the night of the fourteenth as              
usual, without undressing, in the room next to the one where the            
prince lay. Several times, waking up, she heard his groans and              
muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps of Tikhon and the            
doctor when they turned him over. Several times she listened at the         
door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were louder than             
usual and that they turned him over oftener. She could not sleep and        
several times went to the door and listened, wishing to enter but           
not deciding to do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw           
and knew how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to         
him. She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned from the look      
she sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She knew that her going in        
during the night at an unusual hour would irritate him.                     
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                                            
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                                                             
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  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.                                                
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 30}
  "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."                                                                
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 35}
  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?"                                                        
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 40}
  "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.                                  
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 45}
  He glanced at her with timid surprise.                                    
  "Where is he?"                                                            
  "He's with the army, Father, at Smolensk."                                
  He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in         
answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood         
and remembered everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes.        
  "Yes," he said, softly and distinctly. "Russia has perished. They've      
destroyed her."                                                             
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 50}
  And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes.                
Princess Mary could no longer restrain herself and wept while she           
gazed at his face.                                                          
  Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes,        
and Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears.                        
  Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them             
could understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and        
repeated it. Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in           
the mood in which he had just been speaking. She thought he was             
speaking of Russia, or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson,          
or of his own death, and so she could not guess his words.                  
  "Put on your white dress. I like it," was what he said.                   
  Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the         
doctor taking her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and          
trying to persuade her to prepare for her journey. When she had left        
the room the prince again began speaking about his son, about the war,      
and about the Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his          
hoarse voice, and then he had a second and final stroke.                    
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 55}
  Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot      
and sunny. She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel          
nothing, except passionate love for her father, love such as she            
thought she had never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing            
into the garden and as far as the pond, along the avenues of young          
lime trees Prince Andrew had planted.                                       
  "Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end         
quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me?         
What use will peace be when he is no longer here?" Princess Mary            
murmured, pacing the garden with hurried steps and pressing her             
hands to her bosom which heaved with convulsive sobs.                       
  When she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her          
again to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne- who had remained        
at Bogucharovo and did not wish to leave it- coming toward her with         
a stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district,           
who had come personally to point out to the princess the necessity for      
her prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding          
him; she led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with         
him. Then, excusing herself, she went to the door of the old                
prince's room. The doctor came out with an agitated face and said           
she could not enter.                                                        
  "Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!"                                  
  She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot          
of the slope by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know      
how long she had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a          
woman's footsteps running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha         
her maid, who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped                
suddenly as if in alarm on seeing her mistress.                             
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 60}
  "Please come, Princess... The Prince," said Dunyasha in a breaking        
voice.                                                                      
  "Immediately, I'm coming, I'm coming!" replied the princess               
hurriedly, not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she was saying, and      
trying to avoid seeing the girl she ran toward the house.                   
  "Princess, it's God's will! You must be prepared for everything,"         
said the Marshal, meeting her at the house door.                            
  "Let me alone; it's not true!" she cried angrily to him.                  
  The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her         
father's door. "Why are these people with frightened faces stopping         
me? I don't want any of them! And what are they doing here?" she            
thought. She opened the door and the bright daylight in that                
previously darkened room startled her. In the room were her nurse           
and other women. They all drew back from the bed, making way for            
her. He was still lying on the bed as before, but the stern expression      
of his quiet face made Princess Mary stop short on the threshold.           
                                                    {BK10|CH8 ^paragraph 65}
  "No, he's not dead- it's impossible!" she told herself and                
approached him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed      
her lips to his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force      
of the tenderness she had been feeling for him vanished instantly           
and was replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before            
her. "No, he is no more! He is not, but here where he was is something      
unfamiliar and hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent            
mystery!" And hiding her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into         
the arms of the doctor, who held her up.                                    
-                                                                           
  In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had        
been the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth        
should not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied           
together the legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed      
him in uniform with his decorations and placed his shriveled little         
body on a table. Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but      
it all got done as if of its own accord. Toward night candles were          
burning round his coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was          
strewn with sprays of juniper, a printed band was tucked in under           
his shriveled head, and in a corner of the room sat a chanter               
reading the psalms.                                                         
  Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the        
inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round      
the coffin- the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women- and all          
with fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and              
kissed the old prince's cold and stiffened hand.                            
                                                                            
BK10|CH9                                                                    
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners had always          
been absentees, and its peasants were of quite a different character        
from those of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress,         
and disposition. They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used      
to approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to            
Bald Hills to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches,           
but he disliked them for their boorishness.                                 
  Prince Andrew's last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced              
hospitals and schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to          
pay, had not softened their disposition but had on the contrary             
strengthened in them the traits of character the old prince called          
boorishness. Various obscure rumors were always current among them: at      
one time a rumor that they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at            
another of a new religion to which they were all to be converted; then      
of some proclamation of the Tsar's and of an oath to the Tsar Paul          
in 1797 (in connection with which it was rumored that freedom had been      
granted them but the landowners had stopped it), then of Peter              
Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven years' time, when                
everything would be made free and so "simple" that there would be no        
restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and his invasion were        
connected in their minds with the same sort of vague notions of             
Antichrist, the end of the world, and "pure freedom."                       
  In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to           
the crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work             
where they pleased. There were very few resident landlords in the           
neighborhood and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in           
the lives of the peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents      
in the life of the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are      
so baffling to contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly               
noticeable than among others. One instance, which had occurred some         
twenty years before, was a movement among the peasants to emigrate          
to some unknown "warm rivers." Hundreds of peasants, among them the         
Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began selling their cattle and moving in         
whole families toward the southeast. As birds migrate to somewhere          
beyond the sea, so these men with their wives and children streamed to      
the southeast, to parts where none of them had ever been. They set off      
in caravans, bought their freedom one by one or ran away, and drove or      
walked toward the "warm rivers." Many of them were punished, some sent      
to Siberia, many died of cold and hunger on the road, many returned of      
their own accord, and the movement died down of itself just as it           
had sprung up, without apparent reason. But such undercurrents still        
existed among the people and gathered new forces ready to manifest          
themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and at the same time            
simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone living in           
close touch with these people it was apparent that these undercurrents      
were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.                               
  Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old              
prince's death, noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that           
contrary to what was happening in the Bald Hills district, where            
over a radius of forty miles all the peasants were moving away and          
leaving their villages to be devastated by the Cossacks, the                
peasants in the steppe region round Bogucharovo were, it was                
rumored, in touch with the French, received leaflets from them that         
passed from hand to hand, and did not migrate. He learned from              
domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant Karp, who possessed great      
influence in the village commune and had recently been away driving         
a government transport, had returned with news that the Cossacks            
were destroying deserted villages, but that the French did not harm         
them. Alpatych also knew that on the previous day another peasant           
had even brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which was occupied        
by the French, a proclamation by a French general that no harm would        
be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would be paid         
for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant had brought      
from Visloukhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that            
they were false) paid to him in advance for hay.                            
  More important still, Alpatych learned that on the morning of the         
very day he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the      
princess' luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting        
at which it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no      
time to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince's death,         
the Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary's leaving at once, as it was      
becoming dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he             
could not be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of           
the day the old prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return      
next day for the funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he              
received tidings that the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had         
barely time to remove his own family and valuables from his estate.         
                                                     {BK10|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed by the village         
Elder, Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive "Dronushka."      
  Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants           
who grow big beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged          
till they are sixty or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a        
tooth, as straight and strong at sixty as at thirty.                        
  Soon after the migration to the "warm rivers," in which he had taken      
part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder and overseer of             
Bogucharovo, and had since filled that post irreproachably for              
twenty-three years. The peasants feared him more than they did their        
master. The masters, both the old prince and the young, and the             
steward respected him and jestingly called him "the Minister."              
During the whole time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill,      
never after sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the          
least fatigue, and though he could not read he had never forgotten a        
single money account or the number of quarters of flour in any of           
the endless cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock of         
the whole corn crop on any single acre of the Bogucharovo fields.           
  Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate, sent for        
his Dron on the day of the prince's funeral and told him to have            
twelve horses got ready for the princess' carriages and eighteen carts      
for the things to be removed from Bogucharovo. Though the peasants          
paid quitrent, Alpatych thought no difficulty would be made about           
complying with this order, for there were two hundred and thirty            
households at work in Bogucharovo and the peasants were well to do.         
But on hearing the order Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent.         
Alpatych named certain peasants he knew, from whom he told him to take      
the carts.                                                                  
  Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away carting.         
Alpatych named others, but they too, according to Dron, had no              
horses available: some horses were carting for the government,              
others were too weak, and others had died for want of fodder. It            
seemed that no horses could be had even for the carriages, much less        
for the carting.                                                            
                                                    {BK10|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a          
model village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince's               
estates for twenty years in vain. He a model steward, possessing in         
the highest degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts          
of those he dealt with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood        
that his answers did not express his personal views but the general         
mood of the Bogucharovo commune, by which the Elder had already been        
carried away. But he also knew that Dron, who had acquired property         
and was hated by the commune, must be hesitating between the two            
camps: the masters' and the serfs'. He noticed this hesitation in           
Dron's look and therefore frowned and moved closer up to him.               
  "Now just listen, Dronushka," said he. "Don't talk nonsense to me.        
His excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the         
people away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order        
from the Tsar about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar.      
Do you hear?"                                                               
  "I hear," Dron answered without lifting his eyes.                         
  Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply.                               
  "Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!" he said, shaking his head.            
                                                    {BK10|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  "The power is in your hands," Dron rejoined sadly.                        
  "Eh, Dron, drop it!" Alpatych repeated, withdrawing his hand from         
his bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor at Dron's feet. "I can         
see through you and three yards into the ground under you," he              
continued, gazing at the floor in front of Dron.                            
  Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych and again            
lowered his eyes.                                                           
  "You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave         
their homes and go to Moscow and to get carts ready for tomorrow            
morning for the princess' things. And don't go to any meeting               
yourself, do you hear?"                                                     
  Dron suddenly fell on his knees.                                          
                                                    {BK10|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  "Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge        
me, for Christ's sake!"                                                     
  "Stop that!" cried Alpatych sternly. "I see through you and three         
yards under you," he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping,        
his knowledge of the right time to sow the oats, and the fact that          
he had been able to retain the old prince's favor for twenty years had      
long since gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the        
power of seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute          
of wizards.                                                                 
  Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted      
him.                                                                        
  "What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are you             
thinking of, eh?"                                                           
  "What am I to do with the people?" said Dron. "They're quite              
beside themselves; I have already told them..."                             
                                                    {BK10|CH9 ^paragraph 25}
  "'Told them,' I dare say!" said Alpatych. "Are they drinking?" he         
asked abruptly.                                                             
  "Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they've fetched another         
barrel."                                                                    
  "Well, then, listen! I'll go to the police officer, and you tell          
them so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got             
ready."                                                                     
  "I understand."                                                           
  Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long         
time and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no            
suspicion that they can possibly disobey. Having wrung a submissive "I      
understand" from Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he      
not only doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of           
troops the carts would not be forthcoming.                                  
                                                    {BK10|CH9 ^paragraph 30}
  And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been provided.          
In the village, outside the drink shop, another meeting was being           
held, which decided that the horses should be driven out into the           
woods and the carts should not be provided. Without saying anything of      
this to the princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out of the      
carts which had arrived from Bald Hills and had those horses got ready      
for the princess' carriages. Meanwhile he went himself to the police        
authorities.                                                                
                                                                            
BK10|CH10                                                                   
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  After her father's funeral Princess Mary shut herself up in her room      
and did not admit anyone. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatych      
was asking for orders about their departure. (This was before his talk      
with Dron.) Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she           
had been lying and replied through the closed door that she did not         
mean to go away and begged to be left in peace.                             
  The windows of the room in which she was lying looked westward.           
She lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons        
of the leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her         
confused thoughts were centered on one subject- the irrevocability          
of death and her own spiritual baseness, which she had not                  
suspected, but which had shown itself during her father's illness. She      
wished to pray but did not dare to, dared not in her present state          
of mind address herself to God. She lay for a long time in that             
position.                                                                   
  The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its slanting         
rays shone into the open window, lighting up the room and part of           
the morocco cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of         
her thoughts suddenly stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed           
her hair, got up, and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the        
freshness of the clear but windy evening.                                   
  "Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and no one will      
hinder you," she said to herself, and sinking into a chair she let her      
head fall on the window sill.                                               
  Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden         
and kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a      
black dress and weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary,               
sighed, kissed her, and immediately began to cry. The princess              
looked up at her. All their former disharmony and her own jealousy          
recurred to her mind. But she remembered too how he had changed of          
late toward Mademoiselle Bourienne and could not bear to see her,           
thereby showing how unjust were the reproaches Princess Mary had            
mentally addressed to her. "Besides, is it for me, for me who               
desired his death, to condemn anyone?" she thought.                         
                                                    {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of                 
Mademoiselle Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a distance, but        
who yet was dependent on her and living in her house. She felt sorry        
for her and held out her hand with a glance of gentle inquiry.              
Mademoiselle Bourienne at once began crying again and kissed that           
hand, speaking of the princess' sorrow and making herself a partner in      
it. She said her only consolation was the fact that the princess            
allowed her to share her sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings         
should sink into nothing but this great grief; that she felt herself        
blameless in regard to everyone, and that he, from above, saw her           
affection and gratitude. The princess heard her, not heeding her words      
but occasionally looking up at her and listening to the sound of her        
voice.                                                                      
  "Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess," said Mademoiselle      
Bourienne after a pause. "I understand that you could not, and cannot,      
think of yourself, but with my love for you I must do so.... Has            
Alpatych been to you? Has he spoken to you of going away?" she asked.       
  Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand who was to go        
or where to. "Is it possible to plan or think of anything now? Is it        
not all the same?" she thought, and did not reply.                          
  "You know, chere Marie," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "that we are        
in danger- are surrounded by the French. It would be dangerous to move      
now. If we go we are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God             
knows..."                                                                   
  Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she      
was talking about.                                                          
                                                   {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  "Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me now," she           
said. "Of course I would on no account wish to go away from him....         
Alpatych did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do           
nothing, nothing, and don't want to...."                                    
  "I've spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to get away            
tomorrow, but I think it would now be better to stay here," said            
Mademoiselle Bourienne. "Because, you will agree, chere Marie, to fall      
into the hands of the soldiers or of riotous peasants would be              
terrible."                                                                  
  Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not         
printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau's, telling people      
not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would              
afford them proper protection. She handed this to the princess.             
  "I think it would be best to appeal to that general," she continued,      
"and and am sure that all due respect would be shown you."                  
  Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to quiver with           
stifled sobs.                                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  "From whom did you get this?" she asked.                                  
  "They probably recognized that I am French, by my name," replied          
Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.                                            
  Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the window           
and with a pale face went out of the room and into what had been            
Prince Andrew's study.                                                      
  "Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or somebody to me!" she           
said, "and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to come to me," she              
added, hearing Mademoiselle Bourienne's voice. "We must go at once, at      
once!" she said, appalled at the thought of being left in the hands of      
the French.                                                                 
  "If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the French!            
That I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, asked General            
Rameau for protection and accepted his favor!" This idea horrified          
her, made her shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and             
pride as she had never experienced before. All that was distressing,        
and especially all that was humiliating, in her position rose               
vividly to her mind. "They, the French, would settle in this house: M.      
le General Rameau would occupy Prince Andrew's study and amuse himself      
by looking through and reading his letters and papers. Mademoiselle         
Bourienne would do the honors of Bogucharovo for him. I should be           
given a small room as a favor, the soldiers would violate my                
father's newly dug grave to steal his crosses and stars, they would         
tell me of their victories over the Russians, and would pretend to          
sympathize with my sorrow..." thought Princess Mary, not thinking           
her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father and her         
brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what            
happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead        
father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their                
thoughts and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what        
they would have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into            
Prince Andrew's study, trying to enter completely into his ideas,           
and considered her position.                                                
                                                   {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her           
father's death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously          
unknown force and took possession of her.                                   
  Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now for Michael          
Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron. Dunyasha, the nurse, and the          
other maids could not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne's               
statement was correct. Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the         
police. Neither could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on being         
sent for came in with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With        
just the same smile of agreement with which for fifteen years he had        
been accustomed to answer the old prince without expressing views of        
his own, he now replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite          
could be got from his answers. The old valet Tikhon, with sunken,           
emaciated face that bore the stamp of inconsolable grief, replied:          
"Yes, Princess" to all Princess Mary's questions and hardly                 
refrained from sobbing as he looked at her.                                 
  At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and with a            
deep bow to Princess Mary came to a halt by the doorpost.                   
  Princess Mary walked up and down the room and stopped in front of         
him.                                                                        
  "Dronushka," she said, regarding as a sure friend this Dronushka who      
always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to        
the fair at Vyazma every year and smilingly offer it to her,                
"Dronushka, now since our misfortune..." she began, but could not go        
on.                                                                         
                                                   {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  "We are all in God's hands," said he, with a sigh.                        
  They were silent for a while.                                             
  "Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to          
turn to. Is true, as they tell me, that I can't even go away?"              
  "Why shouldn't you go away, your excellency? You can go," said Dron.      
  "I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy. Dear friend,      
I can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have nobody! I want to go         
away tonight or early tomorrow morning."                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 30}
  Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and said: "There are      
no horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so."                                       
  "Why are there none?" asked the princess.                                 
  "It's all God's scourge," said Dron. "What horses we had have been        
taken for the army or have died- this is such a year! It's not a            
case of feeding horses- we may die of hunger ourselves! As it is, some      
go three days without eating. We've nothing, we've been ruined."            
  Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.                   
  "The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?" she asked.                 
                                                   {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 35}
  "They're dying of hunger," said Dron. "It's not a case of carting."       
  "But why didn't you tell me, Dronushka? Isn't it possible to help         
them? I'll do all I can...."                                                
  To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such           
sorrow was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor,           
and the rich could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard             
vaguely that there was such a thing as "landlord's corn" which was          
sometimes given to the peasants. She also knew that neither her father      
nor her brother would refuse to help the peasants in need, she only         
feared to make some mistake in speaking about the distribution of           
the grain she wished to give. She was glad such cares presented             
themselves, enabling her without scruple to forget her own grief.           
She began asking Dron about the peasants' needs and what there was          
in Bogucharovo that belonged to the landlord.                               
  "But we have grain belonging to my brother?" she said.                    
  "The landlord's grain is all safe," replied Dron proudly. "Our            
prince did not order it to be sold."                                        
                                                   {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 40}
  "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!"                               
                                                   {BK10|CH10 ^paragraph 45}
  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.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK10|CH11                                                                   
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that Dron had come,      
and all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess'             
order and wished to have word with their mistress.                          
  "But I never told them to come," said Princess Mary. "I only told         
Dron to let them have the grain."                                           
  "Only, for God's sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and             
don't go out to them. It's all a trick," said Dunyasha, "and when           
Yakov Alpatych returns let us get away... and please don't..."              
  "What is a trick?" asked Princess Mary in surprise.                       
  "I know it is, only listen to me for God's sake! Ask nurse too. They      
say they don't agree to leave Bogucharovo as you ordered."                  
                                                    {BK10|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  "You're making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away,"            
said Princess Mary. "Call Dronushka."                                       
  Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha's words; the peasants had come by        
the princess' order.                                                        
  "But I never sent for them," declared the princess. "You must have        
given my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the          
grain."                                                                     
  Dron only sighed in reply.                                                
  "If you order it they will go away," said he.                             
                                                   {BK10|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  "No, no. I'll go out to them," said Princess Mary, and in spite of        
the nurse's and Dunyasha's protests she went out into the porch; Dron,      
Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael Ivanovich following her.                   
  "They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to        
remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the        
French," thought Princess Mary. "I will offer them monthly rations and      
housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in        
my place," she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the           
crowd standing on the pasture by the barn.                                  
  The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their      
hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt,          
came close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were          
fixed on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could        
not distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them        
all at once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she        
represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she            
boldly began her speech.                                                    
  "I am very glad you have come," she said without raising her eyes,        
and feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. "Dronushka             
tells me that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune,        
and I shall grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because      
it is dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving         
you everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all           
our grain, so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been            
told that I am giving you the grain to keep you here- that is not           
true. On the contrary, I ask you to go with all your belongings to our      
estate near Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there           
you shall want for nothing. You shall be given food and lodging."           
  The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd.       
                                                   {BK10|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.          
                                                   {BK10|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                                                              
                                                   {BK10|CH11 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                         
                                                   {BK10|CH11 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                           
                                                   {BK10|CH11 ^paragraph 35}
  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.                                                      
                                                                            
BK10|CH12                                                                   
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of        
her room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached her         
from the village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt         
that she could not understand them however much she might think             
about them. She thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after         
the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to      
the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.                       
  After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh.          
Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full        
moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist      
began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.        
  Pictures of the near past- her father's illness and last moments-         
rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now        
lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the last one,        
the picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate          
even in imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And             
these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such           
detail that they seemed now present, now past, and now future.              
  She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was      
being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills,        
muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray            
eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.                           
  "Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died,"         
she thought. "He had always thought what he said then." And she             
recalled in all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the        
last stroke, when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at         
home against his will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs          
on tiptoe, and going to the door of the conservatory where he slept         
that night had listened at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he      
was saying something to Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm         
nights and of the Empress. Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why        
didn't he call me? Why didn't he let me be there instead of Tikhon?"        
Princess Mary had thought and thought again now. "Now he will never         
tell anyone what he had in his soul. Never will that moment return for      
him or for me when he might have said all he longed to say, and not         
Tikhon but I might have heard and understood him. Why didn't I enter        
the room?" she thought. "Perhaps he would then have said to me what he      
said the day he died. While talking to Tikhon he asked about me twice.      
He wanted to see me, and I was standing close by, outside the door. It      
was sad and painful for him to talk to Tikhon who did not understand        
him. I remember how he began speaking to him about Lise as if she were      
alive- he had forgotten she was dead- and Tikhon reminded him that she      
was no more, and he shouted, 'Fool!' He was greatly depressed. From         
behind the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning and loudly      
exclaimed, 'My God!' Why didn't I go in then? What could he have            
done to me? What could I have lost? And perhaps he would then have          
been comforted and would have said that word to me." And Princess Mary      
uttered aloud the caressing word he had said to her on the day of           
his death. "Dear-est!" she repeated, and began sobbing, with tears          
that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before her. And not the        
face she had known ever since she could remember and had always seen        
at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen for the first        
time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details, when she             
stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.                            
                                                    {BK10|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  "Dear-est!" she repeated again.                                           
  "What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking      
now?" This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer         
she saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as          
he lay in his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief.      
And the horror that had seized her when she touched him and                 
convinced herself that that was not he, but something mysterious and        
horrible, seized her again. She tried to think of something else and        
to pray, but could do neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the         
moonlight and the shadows, expecting every moment to see his dead           
face, and she felt that the silence brooding over the house and within      
it held her fast.                                                           
  "Dunyasha," she whispered. "Dunyasha!" she screamed wildly, and           
tearing herself out of this silence she ran to the servants'                
quarters to meet her old nurse and the maidservants who came running        
toward her.                                                                 
                                                                            
BK10|CH13                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by             
Lavrushka who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar             
orderly, left their quarters at Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo,        
and went for a ride- to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and to find        
out whether there was any hay to be had in the villages.                    
  For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between the two hostile      
armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to          
it as for the French vanguard; Rostov, as a careful squadron                
commander, wished to take such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo        
before the French could get them.                                           
  Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the way to             
Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where         
they hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they               
questioned Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and         
raced one another to try Ilyin's horse.                                     
  Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering was the property      
of that very Bolkonski who had been engaged to his sister.                  
  Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race along the      
incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin,        
was the first to gallop into the village street.                            
                                                    {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  "You're first!" cried Ilyin, flushed.                                     
  "Yes, always first both on the grassland and here," answered Rostov,      
stroking his heated Donets horse.                                           
  "And I'd have won on my Frenchy, your excellency," said Lavrushka         
from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, "only I didn't wish to      
mortify you.                                                                
  They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants      
was standing.                                                               
  Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals      
without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled             
faces and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling,                   
staggering, and singing some incoherent song, and approached the            
officers.                                                                   
                                                   {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  "Fine fellows!" said Rostov laughing. "Is there any hay here?"            
  "And how like one another," said Ilyin.                                   
  "A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!" sang one of the peasants with a        
blissful smile.                                                             
  One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostov.               
  "Who do you belong to?" he asked.                                         
                                                   {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "The French," replied Ilyin jestingly, "and here is Napoleon              
himself"- and he pointed to Lavrushka.                                      
  "Then you are Russians?" the peasant asked again.                         
  "And is there a large force of you here?" said another, a short man,      
coming up.                                                                  
  "Very large," answered Rostov. "But why have you collected here?" he      
added. "Is it a holiday?"                                                   
  "The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune,"          
replied the peasant, moving away.                                           
                                                   {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women         
and a man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.              
  "The one in pink is mine, so keep off!" said Ilyin on seeing              
Dunyasha running resolutely toward him.                                     
  "She'll be ours!" said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking.                       
  "What do you want, my pretty?" said Ilyin with a smile.                   
  "The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name."             
                                                   {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  "This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am your humble           
servant."                                                                   
  "Co-o-om-pa-ny!" roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as        
he looked at Ilyin talking to the girl. Following Dunyasha, Alpatych        
advanced to Rostov, having bared his head while still at a distance.        
  "May I make bold to trouble your honor?" said he respectfully, but        
with a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with      
a hand thrust into his bosom. "My mistress, daughter of General in          
Chief Prince Nicholas Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this           
month, finding herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of          
these people"- he pointed to the peasants- "asks you to come up to the      
house.... Won't you, please, ride on a little farther," said                
Alpatych with a melancholy smile, "as it is not convenient in the           
presence of...?" He pointed to the two peasants who kept as close to        
him as horseflies to a horse.                                               
  "Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand! Forgive us for           
Christ's sake, eh?" said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.             
  Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.                           
                                                   {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  "Or perhaps they amuse your honor?" remarked Alpatych with a staid        
air, as he pointed at the old men with his free hand.                       
  "No, there's not much to be amused at here," said Rostov, and rode        
on a little way. "What's the matter?" he asked.                             
  "I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here             
don't wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to            
unharness her horses, so that though everything has been packed up          
since morning, her excellency cannot get away."                             
  "Impossible!" exclaimed Rostov.                                           
  "I have the honor to report to you the actual truth," said Alpatych.      
                                                   {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 35}
  Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed            
Alpatych to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs.          
It appeared that the princess' offer of corn to the peasants the            
previous day, and her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had                
actually had so bad an effect that Dron had finally given up the            
keys and joined the peasants and had not appeared when Alpatych sent        
for him; and that in the morning when the princess gave orders to           
harness for her journey, the peasants had come in a large crowd to the      
barn and sent word that they would not let her leave the village: that      
there was an order not to move, and that they would unharness the           
horses. Alpatych had gone out to admonish them, but was told (it was        
chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing himself in the           
crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that there was an           
order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would serve her          
as before and obey her in everything.                                       
  At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the road,        
Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpatych, her nurse, and the      
maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the      
cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran      
away, and the women in the house began to wail.                             
  "Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!" exclaimed deeply moved            
voices as Rostov passed through the anteroom.                               
  Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large            
sitting room, when Rostov was shown in. She could not grasp who he was      
and why he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his         
Russian face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered                
recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at him with           
her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered           
and trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck Rostov as a      
romantic event. "A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the        
mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! And what a strange fate sent me          
here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her features and            
expression!" thought he as he looked at her and listened to her             
timid story.                                                                
  When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day             
after her father's funeral, her voiced trembled. She turned away,           
and then, as if fearing he might take her words as meant to move him        
to pity, looked at him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There        
were tears in Rostov's eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced         
gratefully at him with that radiant look which caused the plainness of      
her face to be forgotten.                                                   
                                                   {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 40}
  "I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride        
here and am able to show my readiness to serve you," said Rostov,           
rising. "Go when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no        
one shall dare to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act      
as your escort." And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal          
blood, he moved toward the door.                                            
  Rostov's deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would         
consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to        
take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.                      
  Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.               
  "I am very, very grateful to you," she said in French, "but I hope        
it was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it." She      
suddenly began to cry.                                                      
  "Excuse me!" she said.                                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH13 ^paragraph 45}
  Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.           
                                                                            
BK10|CH14                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend- my pink one is delicious; her            
name is Dunyasha...."                                                       
  But on glancing at Rostov's face Ilyin stopped short. He saw that         
his hero and commander was following quite a different train of             
thought.                                                                    
  Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying strode off with      
rapid steps to the village.                                                 
  "I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!" said he to          
himself.                                                                    
  Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up        
with him with difficulty.                                                   
                                                    {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  "What decision have you been pleased to come to?" said he.                
  Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned      
on Alpatych.                                                                
  "Decision? What decision? Old dotard!..." cried he. "What have you        
been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can't manage them?        
You're a traitor youself! I know you. I'll flay you all alive!..." And      
as if afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpatych and            
went rapidly forward. Alpatych, mastering his offended feelings,            
kept pace with Rostov at a gliding gait and continued to impart his         
views. He said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present           
moment it would be imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed          
force, and would it not be better first to send for the military?           
  "I'll give them armed force... I'll 'overresist' them!" uttered           
Rostov meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the        
need to vent it.                                                            
  Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with           
quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it        
the more Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action might produce          
good results. The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed            
when they saw Rostov's rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.       
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had gone to see      
the princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among           
the crowd. Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were           
Russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained.      
Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and           
others attacked their ex-Elder.                                             
  "How many years have you been fattening on the commune?" Karp             
shouted at him. "It's all one to you! You'll dig up your pot of             
money and take it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether      
our homes are ruined or not?"                                               
  "We've been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their         
homes or take away a single grain, and that's all about it!" cried          
another.                                                                    
  "It was your son's turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You               
begrudged your lump of a son," a little old man suddenly began              
attacking Dron- "and so they took my Vanka to be shaved for a soldier!      
But we all have to die."                                                    
  "To be sure, we all have to die. I'm not against the commune,"            
said Dron.                                                                  
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  "That's it- not against it! You've filled your belly...."                 
  The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov, followed          
by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp,              
thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to         
the front. Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew      
closer together.                                                            
  "Who is your Elder here? Hey?" shouted Rostov, coming up to the           
crowd with quick steps.                                                     
  "The Elder? What do you want with him?..." asked Karp.                    
  But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off         
and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.                              
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  "Caps off, traitors!" shouted Rostov in a wrathful voice. "Where's        
the Elder?" he cried furiously.                                             
  "The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych, you!" meek and      
flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to        
come off their heads.                                                       
  "We don't riot, we're following the orders," declared Karp, and at        
that moment several voices began speaking together.                         
  "It's as the old men have decided- there's too many of you giving         
orders."                                                                    
  "Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!" cried Rostov unmeaningly        
in a voice not his own, gripping Karp by the collar. "Bind him, bind        
him!" he shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka         
and Alpatych.                                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms from        
behind.                                                                     
  "Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?" he called out.            
  Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to        
come and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the crowd and began      
taking off their belts.                                                     
  "Where's the Elder?" demanded Rostov in a loud voice.                     
  With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.              
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 30}
  "Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!" shouted Rostov, as if that      
order, too, could not possibly meet with any opposition.                    
  And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his        
own belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.                          
  "And you all listen to me!" said Rostov to the peasants. "Be off          
to your houses at once, and don't let one of your voices be heard!"         
  "Why, we've not done any harm! We did it just out of foolishness.         
It's all nonsense... I said then that it was not in order," voices          
were heard bickering with one another.                                      
  "There! What did I say?" said Alpatych, coming into his own again.        
"It's wrong, lads!"                                                         
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 35}
   "All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych," came the answers, and the           
crowd began at once to disperse through the village.                        
  The two bound men were led off to the master's house. The two             
drunken peasants followed them.                                             
  "Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to Karp.                   
  "How can one talk to the masters like that? What were you thinking        
of, you fool?" added the other- "A real fool!"                              
  Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the           
Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the               
proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron,                 
liberated at Princess Mary's wish from the cupboard where he had            
been confined, was standing in the yard directing the men.                  
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 40}
  "Don't put it in so carelessly," said one of the peasants, a man          
with a round smiling face, taking a casket from a housemaid. "You know      
it has cost money! How can you chuck it in like that or shove it under      
the cord where it'll get rubbed? I don't like that way of doing             
things. Let it all be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put      
it under the bast matting and cover it with hay- that's the way!"           
  "Eh, books, books!" said another peasant, bringing out Prince             
Andrew's library cupboards. "Don't catch up against it! It's heavy,         
lads- solid books."                                                         
  "Yes, they worked all day and didn't play!" remarked the tall,            
round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the        
dictionaries that were on the top.                                          
-                                                                           
  Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov did not go back      
to the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure.            
When her carriage drove out of the house, he mounted and accompanied        
her eight miles from Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our      
troops. At the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave of her, for        
the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand.                         
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 45}
  "How can you speak so!" he blushingly replied to Princess Mary's          
expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had        
occurred. "Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had        
only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far,"      
said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I am      
only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance.         
Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to         
meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don't want to make          
me blush, please don't thank me!"                                           
  But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words, thanked        
him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude           
and tenderness. She could not believe that there was nothing to             
thank him for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he        
not been there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers        
and of the French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and          
obvious danger to save her, and even more certain was it that he was a      
man of lofty and noble soul, able to understand her position and her        
sorrow. His kind, honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when           
she herself had begun to cry as she spoke of her loss, did leave her        
memory.                                                                     
  When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt      
her eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time the            
strange question presented itself to her: did she love him?                 
  On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess' position           
was not a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with her in the carriage,        
more than once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window           
and smiled at something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.       
  "Well, supposing I do love him?" thought Princess Mary.                   
                                                   {BK10|CH14 ^paragraph 50}
  Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen        
in love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she comforted          
herself with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she        
would not be to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she        
continued to the end of her life to love the man with whom she had          
fallen in love for the first and last time in her life.                     
  Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his              
words, happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those          
moments that Dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the          
carriage window.                                                            
  "Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and at that very        
moment?" thought Princess Mary. "And that caused his sister to              
refuse my brother?" And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of           
Providence.                                                                 
  The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very agreeable one.      
To remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of        
his adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for        
hay and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he      
grew angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the         
gentle Princess Mary, who was attractive to him and had an enormous         
fortune, had against his will more than once entered his head. For          
himself personally Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by            
marrying her he would make the countess his mother happy, would be          
able to put his father's affairs in order, and would even- he felt it-      
ensure Princess Mary's happiness.                                           
  But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov grew angry          
when he was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya.                             
                                                                            
BK10|CH15                                                                   
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov remembered Prince              
Andrew and sent an order for him to report at headquarters.                 
  Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at        
the very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing the troops for the first           
time. He stopped in the village at the priest's house in front of           
which stood the commander in chief's carriage, and he sat down on           
the bench at the gate awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now         
called Kutuzov. From the field beyond the village came now sounds of        
regimental music and now the roar of many voices shouting "Hurrah!" to      
the new commander in chief. Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo,      
stood near by, some ten paces from Prince Andrew, availing                  
themselves of Kutuzov's absence and of the fine weather. A short,           
swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick mustaches and              
whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince Andrew,                
inquired whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and               
whether he would soon be back.                                              
  Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene Highness'             
staff but was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned          
to a smart orderly, who, with the peculiar contempt with which a            
commander in chief's orderly speaks to officers, replied:                   
  "What? His Serene Highness? I expect he'll be here soon. What do you      
want?"                                                                      
  The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the      
orderly's tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a dispatch runner, and        
approached Bolkonski with a slight bow. Bolkonski made room for him on      
the bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.                   
                                                    {BK10|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  "You're also waiting for the commander in chief?" said he. "They say      
he weceives evewyone, thank God!... It's awful with those sausage           
eaters! Ermolov had weason to ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now        
p'waps Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows what        
was happening. We kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in      
the campaign?" he asked.                                                    
  "I had the pleasure," replied Prince Andrew, "not only of taking          
part in the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I held dear- not      
to mention the estate and home of my birth- my father, who died of          
grief. I belong to the province of Smolensk."                               
  "Ah? You're Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance!        
I'm Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known as 'Vaska,'" said              
Denisov, pressing Prince Andrew's hand and looking into his face            
with a particularly kindly attention. "Yes, I heard," said he               
sympathetically, and after a short pause added: "Yes, it's Scythian         
warfare. It's all vewy well- only not for those who get it in the           
neck. So you are Pwince Andwew Bolkonski?" He swayed his head. "Vewy        
pleased, Pwince, to make your acquaintance!" he repeated again,             
smiling sadly, and he again pressed Prince Andrew's hand.                   
  Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had told him of her          
first suitor. This memory carried him sadly and sweetly back to             
those painful feelings of which he had not thought lately, but which        
still found place in his soul. Of late he had received so many new and      
very serious impressions- such as the retreat from Smolensk, his visit      
to Bald Hills, and the recent news of his father's death- and had           
experienced so many emotions, that for a long time past those memories      
had not entered his mind, and now that they did, they did not act on        
him with nearly their former strength. For Denisov, too, the                
memories awakened by the name of Bolkonski belonged to a distant,           
romantic past, when after supper and after Natasha's singing he had         
proposed to a little girl of fifteen without realizing what he was          
doing. He smiled at the recollection of that time and of his love           
for Natasha, and passed at once to what now interested him                  
passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign he had            
devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had            
proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to propose it to      
Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line of             
operation was to extended, and it proposed that instead of, or              
concurrently with, action on the front to bar the advance of the            
French, we should attack their line of communication. He began              
explaining his plan to Prince Andrew.                                       
  "They can't hold all that line. It's impossible. I will undertake to      
bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men and I will bweak the line,          
that's certain! There's only one way- guewilla warfare!"                    
                                                   {BK10|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to          
Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation shouts were heard from           
the army, growing more incoherent and more diffused, mingling with          
music and songs and coming from the field where the review was held.        
Sounds of hoofs and shouts were nearing the village.                        
  "He's coming! He's coming!" shouted a Cossack standing at the gate.       
  Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers      
(a guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutuzov coming down           
the street mounted on a rather small sorrel horse. A huge suite of          
generals rode behind him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and         
a crowd of officers ran after and around them shouting, "Hurrah!"           
  His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutuzov was              
impatiently urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly under his            
weight, and he raised his hand to his white Horse Guard's cap with a        
red band and no peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to      
the guard of honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly wearing                 
decorations, who were giving him the salute, he looked at them              
silently and attentively for nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a      
commander and then turned to the crowd of generals and officers             
surrounding him. Suddenly his face assumed a subtle expression, he          
shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity.                           
  "And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well, good-by,        
General," he added, and rode into the yard past Prince Andrew and           
Denisov.                                                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  "Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" shouted those behind him.                       
  Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had grown still more        
corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached eyeball, the scar, and        
the familiar weariness of his expression were still the same. He was        
wearing the white Horse Guard's cap and a military overcoat with a          
whip hanging over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and          
swayed limply on his brisk little horse.                                    
  "Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled just audibly as he rode into the      
yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed strain felt by a man         
who means to rest after a ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the        
stirrup and, lurching with his whole body and puckering his face            
with the effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned          
on his knee, groaned, and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks        
and adjutants who stood ready to assist him.                                
  He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up his eyes,           
glanced at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved         
with his waddling gait to the porch. "Whew... whew... whew!" he             
whistled, and again glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old      
men, it was only after some seconds that the impression produced by         
Prince Andrew's face linked itself up with Kutuzov's remembrance of         
his personality.                                                            
  "Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my dear boy? Come      
along..." said he, glancing wearily round, and he stepped onto the          
porch which creaked under his weight.                                       
                                                   {BK10|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch.              
  "And how's your father?"                                                  
  "I received news of his death, yesterday," replied Prince Andrew          
abruptly.                                                                   
  Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay and then            
took off his cap and crossed himself:                                       
  "May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God's will be done to us all!" He      
sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was silent for a while. "I      
loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my            
heart."                                                                     
                                                   {BK10|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat breast, and for        
some time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw        
that Kutuzov's flabby lips were trembling and that tears were in his        
eyes. He sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise           
himself.                                                                    
  "Come! Come with me, we'll have a talk," said he.                         
  But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by his superiors          
than by the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the steps of the porch,      
despite the angry whispers of the adjutants who tried to stop him.          
Kutuzov, his hands still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly.        
Denisov, having given his name, announced that he had to communicate        
to his Serene Highness a matter of great importance for their               
country's welfare. Kutuzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his           
hands with a gesture of annoyance, folded them across his stomach,          
repeating the words: "For our country's welfare? Well, what is it?          
Speak!" Denisov blushed like a girl (it was strange to see the color        
rise in that shaggy, bibulous, time-worn face) and boldly began to          
expound his plan of cutting the enemy's lines of communication between      
Smolensk and Vyazma. Denisov came from those parts and knew the             
country well. His plan seemed decidedly a good one, especially from         
the strength of conviction with which he spoke. Kutuzov looked down at      
his own legs, occasionally glancing at the door of the adjoining hut        
as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge from it. And from            
that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general with a portfolio under      
his arm really did appear.                                                  
  "What?" said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov's explanations, "are        
you ready so soon?"                                                         
  "Ready, your Serene Highness," replied the general.                       
                                                   {BK10|CH15 ^paragraph 30}
  Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: "How is one man to            
deal with it all?" and again listened to Denisov.                           
  "I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer," said Denisov,             
"that I can bweak Napoleon's line of communication!"                        
  "What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril Andreevich              
Denisov?" asked Kutuzov, interrupting him.                                  
  "He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness."                                   
  "Ah, we were friends," said Kutuzov cheerfully. "All right, all           
right, friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we'll have a talk."      
                                                   {BK10|CH15 ^paragraph 35}
  With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his hand for the         
papers Konovnitsyn had brought him.                                         
  "Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?" said the            
general on duty in a discontented voice, "the plans must be examined        
and several papers have to be signed."                                      
  An adjutant came out and announced that everything was in                 
readiness within. But Kutuzov evidently did not wish to enter that          
room till he was disengaged. He made a grimace...                           
  "No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy. I'll         
look at them here," said he. "Don't go away," he added, turning to          
Prince Andrew, who remained in the porch and listened to the general's      
report.                                                                     
  While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the whisper of a          
woman's voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door.               
Several times on glancing that way he noticed behind that door a            
plump, rosy, handsome woman in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief      
on her head, holding a dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the      
commander in chief. Kutiizov's adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew          
that this was the wife of the priest whose home it was, and that she        
intended to offer his Serene Highness bread and salt. "Her husband has      
welcomed his Serene Highness with the cross at the church, and she          
intends to welcome him in the house.... She's very pretty," added           
the adjutant with a smile. At those words Kutuzov looked round. He was      
listening to the general's report- which consisted chiefly of a             
criticism of the position at Tsarevo-Zaymishche- as he had listened to      
Denisov, and seven years previously had listened to the discussion          
at the Austerlitz council of war. He evidently listened only because        
he had ears which, though there was a piece of tow in one of them,          
could not help hearing; but it was evident that nothing the general         
could say would surprise or even interest him, that he knew all that        
would be said beforehand, and heard it all only because he had to,          
as one has to listen to the chanting of a service of prayer. All            
that Denisov had said was clever and to the point. What the general         
was saying was even more clever and to the point, but it was evident        
that Kutuzov despised knowledge and cleverness, and knew of                 
something else that would decide the matter- something independent          
of clever. ness and knowledge. Prince Andrew watched the commander          
in chief's face attentively, and the only expression he could see           
there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the meaning of the                
feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to observe                
propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov despised cleverness and              
learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denisov, but despised      
them not because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledge- he           
did not try to display any of these- but because of something else. He      
despised them because of his old age and experience of life. The            
only instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord during that report          
referred to looting by the Russian troops. At the end of the report         
the general put before him for signature a paper relating to the            
recovery of payment from army commanders for green oats mown down by        
the soldiers, when landowners lodged petitions for compensation.            
                                                   {BK10|CH15 ^paragraph 40}
  After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips together and           
shook his head.                                                             
  "Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all,        
my dear fellow," said he, "into the fire with all such things! Let          
them cut the crops and burn wood to their hearts' content. I don't          
order it or allow it, but I don't exact compensation either. One can't      
get on without it. 'When wood is chopped the chips will fly.'" He           
looked at the paper again. "Oh, this German precision!" he muttered,        
shaking his head.                                                           
                                                                            
BK10|CH16                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  "Well, that's all!" said Kutuzov as he signed the last of the             
documents, and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat        
white neck he moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression.        
  The priest's wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had          
after all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had        
so long been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to             
Kutuzov.                                                                    
  He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and        
said:                                                                       
  "Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!"                               
  He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the      
dish for her. "Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?" he asked,         
moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest's wife           
smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the           
room. The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to         
lunch with him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to        
Kutuzov. He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same           
unbuttoned overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he              
closed as Prince Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife.            
Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne          
by Madame de Genlis.                                                        
                                                    {BK10|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "Well, sit down, sit down here. Let's have a talk," said Kutuzov.         
"It's sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a              
father to you, a second father...."                                         
  Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father's death, and         
what he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it.                   
  "What... what they have brought us to!" Kutuzov suddenly cried in an      
agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince          
Andrew's story the condition Russia was in. "But give me time, give me      
time!" he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue          
this agitating conversation, and added: "I sent for you to keep you         
with me."                                                                   
  "I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am longer fit for the         
staff," replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutuzov noticed.           
  Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him.                                       
                                                   {BK10|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "But above all," added Prince Andrew, "I have grown used to my            
regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I      
should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being      
with you, believe me..."                                                    
  A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutuzov's         
podgy face. He cut Bolkonski short.                                         
  "I am sorry, for I need you. But you're right, you're right! It's         
not here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men        
are not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be           
advisers served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I         
remember, yes, I remember you with the standard!" said Kutuzov, and         
a flush of pleasure suffused Prince Andrew's face at this                   
recollection.                                                               
  Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutuzov offered his cheek      
to be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man's        
eyes. Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutuzov's tears came easily,           
and that he was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a        
wish to show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz        
was both pleasant and flattering to him.                                    
  "Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of         
honor!" He paused. "I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to      
send." And changing the subject, Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish      
war and the peace that had been concluded. "Yes, I have been much           
blamed," he said, "both for that war and the peace... but everything        
came at the right time. Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre.*      
And there were as many advisers there as here..." he went on,               
returning to the subject of "advisers" which evidently occupied him.        
"Ah, those advisers!" said he. "If we had listened to them all we           
should not have made peace with Turkey and should not have been             
through with that war. Everything in haste, but more haste, less            
speed. Kamenski would have been lost if he had not died. He stormed         
fortresses with thirty thousand men. It is not difficult to capture         
a fortress but it is difficult to win a campaign. For that, storming        
and attacking but patience and time are wanted. Kamenski sent soldiers      
to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two things and took more             
fortresses than Kamenski and made the but eat horseflesh!" He swayed        
his head. "And the French shall too, believe me," he went on,               
growing warmer and beating his chest, "I'll make them eat horseflesh!"      
And tears again dimmed his eyes.                                            
                                                   {BK10|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  *"Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait."                 
-                                                                           
  "But shan't we have to accept battle?" remarked Prince Andrew.            
  "We shall if everybody wants it; it can't be helped.... But               
believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two:          
patience and time, they will do it all. But the advisers n'entendent        
pas de cette oreille, voila le mal.* Some want a thing- others              
don't. What's one to do?" he asked, evidently expecting an answer.          
"Well, what do you want us to do?" he repeated and his eye shone            
with a deep, shrewd look. "I'll tell you what to do," he continued, as      
Prince Andrew still did not reply: "I will tell you what to do, and         
what I do. Dans le doute, mon cher," he paused, "abstiens-toi"*[2]- he      
articulated the French proverb deliberately.                                
                                                   {BK10|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
-                                                                           
  *"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."                                 
                                                   {BK10|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter         
had left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his        
unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.              
  Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but             
after that interview with Kutuzov he went back to his regiment              
reassured as to the general course of affairs and as to the man to          
whom it had been entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all         
personal motive in that old man- in whom there seemed to remain only        
the habit of passions, and in place of an intellect (grouping events        
and drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly to contemplate the        
course of events- the more reassured he was that everything would be        
as it should. "He will not bring in any plan of his own. He will not        
devise or undertake anything," thought Prince Andrew, "but he will          
hear everything, remember everything, and put everything in its place.      
He will not hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He           
understands that there is something stronger and more important than        
his own will- the inevitable course of events, and he can see them and      
grasp their significance, and seeing that significance can refrain          
from meddling and renounce his personal wish directed to something          
else. And above all," thought Prince Andrew, "one believes in him           
because he's Russian, despite the novel by Genlis and the French            
proverbs, and because his voice shook when he said: 'What they have         
brought us to!' and had a sob in it when he said he would 'make them        
eat horseflesh!'"                                                           
  On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity         
and general approval were founded with which, despite court                 
influences, the popular choice of Kutuzov as commander in chief was         
received.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK10|CH17                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual      
course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to           
remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to            
believe that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the        
English Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice            
everything for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor         
everyone had displayed during the Emperor's stay was the call for           
contributions of men and money, a necessity that as soon as the             
promises had been made assumed a legal, official form and became            
unavoidable.                                                                
  With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Moscovites' view of their        
situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even         
more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger        
approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices          
that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably          
tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of           
escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too          
depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in           
man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of           
events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till        
it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man            
generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second. So      
it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people         
had been as gay in Moscow as that year.                                     
  Rostopchin's broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a           
potman, and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin, "who- having        
been a militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub- heard          
that Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the              
French in very bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under         
the sign of the eagle, began to address the assembled people," were         
read and discussed, together with the latest of Vasili Lvovich              
Pushkin's bouts rimes.                                                      
  In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these            
broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpushka jeered at the French,         
saying: "They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our            
buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are        
all dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a             
hayfork." Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and          
vulgar. It was said that Rostopchin had expelled all Frenchmen and          
even all foreigners from Moscow, and that there had been some spies         
and agents of Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to             
introduce Rostopchin's witty remark on that occasion. The foreigners        
were deported to Nizhni by boat, and Rostopchin had said to them in         
French: "Rentrez en vousmemes; entrez dans la barque, et n'en faites        
pas une barque de Charon."* There was talk of all the government            
offices having been already removed from Moscow, and to this                
Shinshin's witticism was added- that for that alone Moscow ought to be      
grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamonov's regiment would cost        
him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov had spent even         
more on his, but that the best thing about Bezukhov's action was            
that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the head of his      
regiment without charging anything for the show.                            
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  *"Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to make it a      
barque of Charon."                                                          
-                                                                           
  "You don't spare anyone," said Julie Drubetskaya as she collected         
and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed        
fingers.                                                                    
  Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a             
farewell soiree.                                                            
  "Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What          
pleasure is there to be so caustique?"                                      
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  "A forfeit!" cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie              
called "mon chevalier," and who was going with her to Nizhni.               
  In Julie's set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been           
agreed that they would speak nothing but Russian and that those who         
made a slip and spoke French should pay fines to the Committee of           
Voluntary Contributions.                                                    
  "Another forfeit for a Gallicism," said a Russian writer who was          
present. "'What pleasure is there to be' is not Russian!"                   
  "You spare no one," continued Julie to the young man without heeding      
the author's remark.                                                        
  "For caustique- I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay        
again for the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I           
won't be responsible," she remarked, turning to the author: "I have         
neither the money nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a           
master to teach me Russian!"                                                
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  "Ah, here he is!" she added. "Quand on... No, no," she said to the        
militia officer, "you won't catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its      
rays!" and she smiled amiably at Pierre. "We were just talking of           
you," she said with the facility in lying natural to a society              
woman. "We were saying that your regiment would be sure to be better        
than Mamonov's."                                                            
  "Oh, don't talk to me of my regiment," replied Pierre, kissing his        
hostess' hand and taking a seat beside her. "I am so sick of it."           
  "You will, of course, command it yourself?" said Julie, directing         
a sly, sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.                         
  The latter in Pierre's presence had ceased to be caustic, and his         
face expressed perplexity as to what Julie's smile might mean. In           
spite of his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre's personality        
immediately checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face.                
  "No," said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. "I      
should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I         
should hardly be able to climb onto a horse."                               
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 20}
  Among those whom Julie's guests happened to choose to gossip about        
were the Rostovs.                                                           
  "I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way," said Julie.            
"And he is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The                   
Razumovskis wanted to buy his house and his estate near Moscow, but it      
drags on and on. He asks too much."                                         
  "No, I think the sale will come off in a few days," said someone.         
"Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now."                       
  "Why?" asked Julie. "You don't think Moscow is in danger?"                
  "Then why are you leaving?"                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 25}
  "I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is      
going: and besides- I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon."                     
  "Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen."      
  "If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off           
all his debts," said the militia officer, speaking of Rostov.               
  "A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so          
long in Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago.               
Natalie is quite well again now, isn't she?" Julie asked Pierre with a      
knowing smile.                                                              
  "They are waiting for their younger son," Pierre replied. "He joined      
Obolenski's Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov where the regiment          
is being formed. But now they have had him transferred to my                
regiment and are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave         
long ago, but the countess won't on any account leave Moscow till           
her son returns."                                                           
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 30}
  "I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'. Natalie           
has recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily        
some people get over everything!"                                           
  "Get over what?" inquired Pierre, looking displeased.                     
  Julie smiled.                                                             
  "You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de         
Souza's novels."                                                            
  "What knights? What do you mean?" demanded Pierre, blushing.              
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 35}
  "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.                            
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 40}
  "All right, one can't talk- how tiresome!"                                
  "What is 'the talk of all Moscow'?" Pierre asked angrily, rising          
to his feet.                                                                
  "Come now, Count, you know!"                                              
  "I don't know anything about it," said Pierre.                            
  "I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was always        
more friendly with Vera- that dear Vera."                                   
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 45}
  "No, madame!" Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, "I have not      
taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostova's knight at all, and            
have not been their house for nearly a month. But I cannot                  
understand the cruelty..."                                                  
  "Qui s'excuse s'accuse,"* said Julie, smiling and waving the lint         
triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the            
subject. "Do you know what I heard today? Poor Mary Bolkonskaya             
arrived in Moscow yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her              
father?"                                                                    
-                                                                           
  *"Who excuses himself, accuses himself."                                  
-                                                                           
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 50}
  "Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her," said          
Pierre.                                                                     
  "I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their            
estate near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew."      
  "Well, and how is she?" asked Pierre.                                     
  "She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is             
quite a romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded, and they              
wanted to kill her and had wounded some of her people. He rushed in         
and saved her...."                                                          
  "Another romance," said the militia officer. "Really, this general        
flight has been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche      
is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another."                                   
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 55}
  "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!"                                              
                                                   {BK10|CH17 ^paragraph 60}
  "But how could one say that in Russian?"                                  
                                                                            
BK10|CH18                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchin's               
broadsheets that had been brought that day.                                 
  The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin had              
forbidden people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was          
glad that ladies and tradesmen's wives were leaving the city. "There        
will be less panic and less gossip," ran the broadsheet "but I will         
stake my life on it that that will not enter Moscow." These words           
showed Pierre clearly for the first time that the French would enter        
Moscow. The second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at          
Vyazma, that Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as        
many of the inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were          
ready for them at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which           
could be had at a low price. The tone of the proclamation was not as        
jocose as in the former Chigirin talks. Pierre pondered over these          
broadsheets. Evidently the terrible stormcloud he had desired with the      
whole strength of his soul but which yet aroused involuntary horror in      
him was drawing near.                                                       
  "Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?" he asked          
himself for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on         
the table and began to lay them out for a game of patience.                 
  "If this patience comes out," he said to himself after shuffling the      
cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, "if it comes         
out, it means... what does it mean?"                                        
  He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of         
the eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in.           
                                                    {BK10|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  "Then it will mean that I must go to the army," said Pierre to            
himself. "Come in, come in!" he added to the princess.                      
  Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long            
waist, was still living in Pierre's house. The two younger ones had         
both married.                                                               
  "Excuse my coming to you, cousin," she said in a reproachful and          
agitated voice. "You know some decision must be come to. What is going      
to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is      
it that we are staying on?"                                                 
  "On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine," said Pierre      
in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling      
uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor.                                
  "Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivanovna told me        
today how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly            
does them credit! And the people too are quite mutinous- they no            
longer obey, even my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they        
will soon begin beating us. One can't walk in the streets. But,             
above all, the French will be here any day now, so what are we waiting      
for? I ask just one thing of you, cousin," she went on, "arrange for        
me to be taken to Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can't live under         
Bonaparte's rule."                                                          
                                                   {BK10|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  "Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On         
the contrary..."                                                            
  "I won't submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If        
you don't want to do this..."                                               
  "But I will, I'll give the order at once."                                
  The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry        
with. Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair.                        
  "But you have been misinformed," said Pierre. "Everything is quiet        
in the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I've just been      
reading..." He showed her the broadsheet. "Count Rostopchin writes          
that he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter             
Moscow."                                                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  "Oh, that count of yours!" said the princess malevolently. "He is         
a hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot.            
Didn't he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, 'whoever          
it might be, should be dragged to the lockup by his hair'? (How             
silly!) 'And honor and glory to whoever captures him,' he says. This        
is what his cajolery has brought us to! Barbara Ivanovna told me the        
mob near killed her because she said something in French."                  
  "Oh, but it's so... You take everything so to heart," said Pierre,        
and began laying out his cards for patience.                                
  Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army,        
but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation,        
irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting            
something terrible.                                                         
  Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre's head           
steward came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment          
of his regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates.      
In general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of          
raising a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely         
able to repress a smile.                                                    
  "Well then, sell it," said he. "What's to be done? I can't draw back      
now!"                                                                       
                                                   {BK10|CH18 ^paragraph 20}
  The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the              
better was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the              
catastrophe he expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was          
left in town. Julie had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his              
intimate friends only the Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see        
them.                                                                       
  To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of              
Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to             
destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The        
balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned that it was being             
constructed by the Emperor's desire. The Emperor had written to             
Count Rostopchin as follows:                                                
-                                                                           
  As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and          
intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutuzov to        
let him know. I have informed him of the matter.                            
  Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for      
the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the            
enemy's hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with        
those of the commander in chief.                                            
                                                   {BK10|CH18 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing the Bolotnoe           
Place Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lobnoe Place, stopped and      
got out of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being         
flogged. The flogging was only just over, and the executioner was           
releasing from the flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in         
blue stockings and a green jacket, who was moaning piteously.               
Another criminal, thin and pale, stood near. Judging by their faces         
they were both Frenchmen. With a frightened and suffering look              
resembling that on the thin Frenchman's face, Pierre pushed his way in      
through the crowd.                                                          
  "What is it? Who is it? What is it for?" he kept asking.                  
  But the attention of the crowd- officials, burghers, shopkeepers,         
peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses- was so eagerly centered      
on what was passing in Lobnoe Place that no one answered him. The           
stout man rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently              
trying to appear firm began to pull on his jacket without looking           
about him, but suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry, in           
the way full-blooded grown-up men cry, though angry with himself for        
doing so. In the crowd people began talking loudly, to stifle their         
feelings of pity as it seemed to Pierre.                                    
  "He's cook to some prince."                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH18 ^paragraph 30}
  "Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets      
his teeth on edge!" said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind           
Pierre, when the Frenchman began to cry.                                    
  The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be          
appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch          
in dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.                 
  Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went        
back to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took        
his seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times      
so audibly that the coachman asked him:                                     
  "What is your pleasure?"                                                  
  "Where are you going?" shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to      
Lubyanka Street.                                                            
                                                   {BK10|CH18 ^paragraph 35}
  "To the Governor's, as you ordered," answered the coachman.               
  "Fool! Idiot!" shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman- a thing he           
rarely did. "Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!" "I must        
get away this very day," he murmured to himself.                            
  At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the      
Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he             
could no longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that          
very day that it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman         
this or that the man ought to have known it for himself.                    
  On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey- his head coachman        
who knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow-        
that he would leave that night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that           
his saddle horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged      
that day, so on Evstafey's representation Pierre had to put off his         
departure till next day to allow time for the relay horses to be            
sent on in advance.                                                         
  On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain,        
and after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night        
in Perkhushkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that         
evening. (This was the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there        
in Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could        
answer his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was         
approaching Mozhaysk.                                                       
                                                   {BK10|CH18 ^paragraph 40}
  Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the          
hostel where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no          
room to be had. It was full of officers.                                    
  Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on         
the march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and         
cannon were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and      
the farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into            
that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation           
and a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a        
feeling akin to what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the           
Emperor's visit- a sense of the necessity of undertaking something and      
sacrificing something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that         
everything that constitutes men's happiness- the comforts of life,          
wealth, even life itself- is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away,          
compared with something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did      
not try to determine for whom and for what he felt such particular          
delight in sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the             
question of what to sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself        
afforded him a new and joyous sensation.                                    
                                                                            
BK10|CH19                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevardino               
Redoubt was fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either      
side, and on the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodino itself took            
place.                                                                      
  Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given and         
accepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the          
least sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate      
result for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought      
nearer to the destruction of Moscow- which we feared more than              
anything in the world; and for the French its immediate result was          
that they were brought nearer to the destruction of their whole             
army- which they feared more than anything in the world. What the           
result must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov      
accepted that battle.                                                       
  If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it        
must have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen               
hundred miles and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter      
of his army, he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have      
been equally clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking the      
loss of a quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For           
Kutuzov this was mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing        
draughts I have one man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly        
lose, and therefore should not exchange. When my opponent has               
sixteen men and I have fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than           
he, but when I have exchanged thirteen more men he will be three times      
as strong as I am.                                                          
  Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the           
French was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little        
more than one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a        
hundred and twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty              
thousand against a hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced         
Kutuzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a           
commander of genius, gave it, losing a quarter of his army and              
lengthening his lines of communication still more. If it is said            
that he expected to end the campaign by occupying Moscow as he had          
ended a previous campaign by occupying Vienna, there is much                
evidence to the contrary. Napoleon's historians themselves tell us          
that from Smolensk onwards he wished to stop, knew the danger of his        
extended position, and knew that the occupation of Moscow would not be      
the end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolensk the state in           
which Russian towns were left to him, and had not received a single         
reply to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate.               
  In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov acted                 
involuntarily and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had               
occurred, the historians provided cunningly devised evidence of the         
foresight and genius the generals who, of all the blind tools of            
history were the most enslaved and involuntary.                             
                                                    {BK10|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes          
furnish the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to         
accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that         
kind are meaningless.                                                       
  On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the                 
preceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists a             
definite and well-known, but quite false, conception. All the               
historians describe the affair as follows:                                  
  The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought           
out for itself the best position for a general engagement and found         
such a position at Borodino.                                                
  The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the         
left of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a right        
angle to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the           
battle was fought.                                                          
  In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set          
up on the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth,      
we are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on      
the twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in             
position on the field of Borodino.                                          
                                                   {BK10|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares      
to look into the matter can easily convince himself.                        
  The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the               
contrary, during the retreat passed many positions better than              
Borodino. They did not stop at any one of these positions because           
Kutuzov did not wish to occupy a position he had not himself chosen,        
because the popular demand for a battle had not yet expressed itself        
strongly enough, and because Miloradovich had not yet arrived with the      
militia, and for many other reasons. The fact is that other                 
positions they had passed were stronger, and that the position at           
Borodino (the one where the battle was fought), far from being strong,      
was no more a position than any other spot one might find in the            
Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at hazard.                    
  Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of        
Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that        
is, the position on which the battle took place), but never till the        
twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be         
fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no           
entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the         
twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the      
position of the Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless        
in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it          
more strongly fortified than any other post? And why were all               
efforts exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till         
late at night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have             
sufficed to observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position          
on which the battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the           
Shevardino Redoubt was not an advanced post of that position, we            
have the fact that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and             
Bagration were convinced that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left           
flank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself in his report, written      
in hot haste after the battle, speaks of the Shevardino Redoubt as the      
left flank of the position. It was much later, when reports on the          
battle of Borodino were written at leisure, that the incorrect and          
extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify the mistakes      
of a commander in chief who had to be represented as infallible)            
that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post- whereas in reality        
it was simply a fortified point on the left flank- and that the battle      
of Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previously           
selected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected spot which           
was almost unentrenched.                                                    
  The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river      
Kolocha- which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an          
acute angle- so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flank      
near the village of Novoe, and the center at Borodino at the                
confluence of the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.                                 
  To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how      
the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the             
river Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was      
to prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.       
                                                   {BK10|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
  Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as         
the history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsa      
to Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did not        
exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while      
pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the           
Russian position- at the Shevardino Redoubt- and unexpectedly for           
the Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians,           
not having time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left          
wing from the position they had intended to occupy and took up a new        
position which had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By              
crossing to the other side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad,      
Napoleon shifted the whole forthcoming battle from right to left            
(looking from the Russian side) and transferred it to the plain             
between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and Borodino- a plain no more                    
advantageous as a position than any other plain in Russia- and there        
the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took place.                  
  Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to        
the Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the         
redoubt but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have            
doubted that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our and           
the battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case        
we should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt- our left           
flank- still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the      
center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on        
the twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But        
as the attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the         
retreat of our rea guard (that is, immediately after the fight at           
Gridneva), and as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not          
in time, to begin a general engagement then on the evening of the           
twenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of Borodino         
was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss        
of the one fought on the twenty-sixth.                                      
  After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves on           
the morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank,      
and were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it            
chanced to be.                                                              
  Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by             
weak, unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that                
position was increased by the fact that the Russian commanders- not         
having fully realized what had happened, namely the loss of our             
position on the left flank and the shifting of the whole field of           
the forthcoming battle from right to left- maintained their extended        
position from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently had          
to move their forces from right to left during the battle. So it            
happened that throughout the whole battle the Russians opposed the          
entire French army launched against our left flank with but half as         
many men. (Poniatowski's action against Utitsa, and Uvarov's on the         
right flank against the French, were actions distinct from the main         
course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino did not take place at      
all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders' mistakes even at the        
cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian army and people) it        
has been described. The battle of Borodino was not fought on a              
chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly weaker than        
those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the Shevardino          
Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodino on an open and          
almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous as the      
French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not merely         
unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive result,         
but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete disintegration           
and flight.                                                                 
                                                                            
BK10|CH20                                                                   
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozhaysk. At        
the descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led           
out of the town past the cathedral on the right, where a service was        
being held and the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle        
and proceeded on foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down        
the hill preceded by its singers. Coming up toward him was a train          
of carts carrying men who had been wounded in the engagement the day        
before. The peasant drivers, shouting and lashing their horses, kept        
crossing from side to side. The carts, in each of which three or            
four wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, jolted over the stones         
that had been thrown on the steep incline to make it something like         
a road. The wounded, bandaged with rags, with pale cheeks,                  
compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to the sides of the             
carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost all of them           
stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre's white hat and green      
swallow-tail coat.                                                          
  Pierre's coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep        
to one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the          
hill with its singers, surrounded Pierre's carriage and blocked the         
road. Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in      
which the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not               
penetrate into the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above        
Pierre's head was the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded          
merrily. One of the carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road      
close to Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it,         
placed a stone under one of its tireless hind wheels, and began             
arranging the breech-band on his little horse.                              
  One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was            
following the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand           
and turned to look at Pierre.                                               
  "I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us          
on to Moscow?" he asked.                                                    
  Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question.          
He was looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy          
of wounded, now at the cart by which he was standing, in which two          
wounded men were sitting and one was lying. One of those sitting up in      
the cart had probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was         
wrapped in rags and one cheek was swollen to the size of a baby's           
head. His nose and mouth were twisted to one side. This soldier was         
looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a      
fair-haired recruit as white as though there was no blood in his            
thin face, looked at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third           
lay prone so that his face was not visible. The cavalry singers were        
passing close by:                                                           
                                                    {BK10|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
     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.                                                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  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.         
                                                   {BK10|CH20 ^paragraph 15}
  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...."                            
                                                   {BK10|CH20 ^paragraph 20}
  Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of      
taking part in a battle.                                                    
  The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov.                        
  "Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?"      
he said, exchanging glances with his young companion. "Anyhow his           
Serene Highness knows you and will receive you graciously. That's what      
you must do."                                                               
  The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.                                   
  "You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our position is      
exactly?" said Pierre.                                                      
                                                   {BK10|CH20 ^paragraph 25}
  "The position?" repeated the doctor. "Well, that's not my line.           
Drive past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going on there. Go up the        
hillock and you'll see."                                                    
  "Can one see from there?... If you would..."                              
  But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his gig.                  
  "I would go with you but on my honor I'm up to here"- and he pointed      
to his throat. "I'm galloping to the commander of the corps. How do         
matters stand?... You know, Count, there'll be a battle tomorrow.           
Out of an army of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty         
thousand wounded, and we haven't stretchers, or bunks, or dressers, or      
doctors enough for six thousand. We have ten thousand carts, but we         
need other things as well- we must manage as best we can!"                  
  The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young and old, who      
had stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had      
noticed), twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death        
amazed Pierre.                                                              
                                                   {BK10|CH20 ^paragraph 30}
  "They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but             
death?" And by some latent sequence of thought the descent of the           
Mozhaysk hill, the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the           
slanting rays of the sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly           
recurred to his mind.                                                       
  "The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a         
moment think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded.      
Yet from among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they        
wonder at my hat! Strange!" thought Pierre, continuing his way to           
Tatarinova.                                                                 
  In front of a landowner's house to the left of the road stood             
carriages, wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The               
commander in chief was putting up there, but just when Pierre               
arrived he was not in and hardly any of the staff were there- they had      
gone to the church service. Pierre drove on toward Gorki.                   
  When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street,      
he saw for the first time peasant militiamen in their white shirts and      
with crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated      
and perspiring, were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to        
the right of the road.                                                      
  Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth      
along planks, while others stood about doing nothing.                       
                                                   {BK10|CH20 ^paragraph 35}
  Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the men. On            
seeing these peasants, who were evidently still amused by the               
novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre once more thought of the      
wounded men at Mozhaysk and understood what the soldier had meant when      
he said: "They want the whole nation to fall on them." The sight of         
these bearded peasants at work on the battlefield, with their queer,        
clumsy boots and perspiring necks, and their shirts opening from the        
left toward the middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned                
collarbones, impressed Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and          
importance of the moment than anything he had yet seen or heard.            
                                                                            
BK10|CH21                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling               
militiamen, ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor,         
the battlefield could be seen.                                              
  It was about eleven o'clock. The sun shone somewhat to the left           
and behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising      
like an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied             
atmosphere.                                                                 
  From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the            
Smolensk highroad, passing through a village with a white church            
some five hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was        
Borodino. Below the village the road crossed the river by a bridge          
and, winding down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of          
Valuevo visible about four miles away, where Napoleon was then              
stationed. Beyond Valuevo the road disappeared into a yellowing forest      
on the horizon. Far in the distance in that birch and fir forest to         
the right of the road, the cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery        
gleamed in the sun. Here and there over the whole of that blue              
expanse, to right and left of the forest and the road, smoking              
campfires could be seen and indefinite masses of troops- ours and           
the enemy's. The ground to the right- along the course of the               
Kolocha and Moskva rivers- was broken and hilly. Between the hollows        
the villages of Bezubova and Zakharino showed in the distance. On           
the left the ground was more level; there were fields of grain, and         
the smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been burned down, could be        
seen.                                                                       
  All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left nor           
the right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations.               
Nowhere could he see the battlefield he had expected to find, but only      
fields, meadows, troops, woods, the smoke of campfires, villages,           
mounds, and streams; and try as he would he could descry no military        
"position" in this place which teemed with life, nor could he even          
distinguish our troops from the enemy's.                                    
  "I must ask someone who knows," he thought, and addressed an officer      
who was looking with curiosity at his huge unmilitary figure.               
                                                    {BK10|CH21 ^paragraph 5}
  "May I ask you," said Pierre, "what village that is in front?"            
  "Burdino, isn't it?" said the officer, turning to his companion.          
  "Borodino," the other corrected him.                                      
  The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk, moved up        
to Pierre.                                                                  
  "Are those our men there?" Pierre inquired.                               
                                                   {BK10|CH21 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                    
                                                   {BK10|CH21 ^paragraph 15}
  "Those are ours."                                                         
  "Ah, ours! And there?..." Pierre pointed to another knoll in the          
distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay in a hollow         
where also some campfires were smoking and something black was              
visible.                                                                    
  "That's his again," said the officer. (It was the Shevardino              
Redoubt.) "It was ours yesterday, but now it is his."                       
  "Then how about our position?"                                            
  "Our position?" replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. "I      
can tell you quite clearly, because I constructed nearly all our            
entrenchments. There, you see? There's our center, at Borodino, just        
there," and he pointed to the village in front of them with the             
white church. "That's where one crosses the Kolocha. You see down           
there where the rows of hay are lying in the hollow, there's the            
bridge. That's our center. Our right flank is over there"- he               
pointed sharply to the right, far away in the broken ground- "That's        
where the Moskva River is, and we have thrown up three redoubts there,      
very strong ones. The left flank..." here the officer paused. "Well,        
you see, that's difficult to explain.... Yesterday our left flank           
was there at Shevardino, you see, where the oak is, but now we have         
withdrawn our left wing- now it is over there, do you see that village      
and the smoke? That's Semenovsk, yes, there," he pointed to                 
Raevski's knoll. "But the battle will hardly be there. His having           
moved his troops there is only a ruse; he will probably pass round          
to the right of the Moskva. But wherever it may be, many a man will be      
missing tomorrow!" he remarked.                                             
                                                   {BK10|CH21 ^paragraph 20}
  An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while he was           
giving these explanations had waited in silence for him to finish           
speaking, but at this point, evidently not liking the officer's             
remark, interrupted him.                                                    
  "Gabions must be sent for," said he sternly.                              
  The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood that one might      
think of how many men would be missing tomorrow but ought not to speak      
to speak of it.                                                             
  "Well, send number three company again," the officer replied              
hurriedly.                                                                  
  "And you, are you one of the doctors?"                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH21 ^paragraph 25}
  "No, I've come on my own," answered Pierre, and he went down the          
hill again, passing the militiamen.                                         
  "Oh, those damned fellows!" muttered the officer who followed him,        
holding his nose as he ran past the men at work.                            
  "There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are... They'll      
be here in a minute..." voices were suddenly heard saying; and              
officers, soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the          
road.                                                                       
  A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. First           
along the dusty road came the infantry in ranks, bareheaded and with        
arms reversed. From behind them came the sound of church singing.           
  Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the             
procession.                                                                 
                                                   {BK10|CH21 ^paragraph 30}
  "They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian Mother of         
God!" someone cried.                                                        
  "The Smolensk Mother of God," another corrected him.                      
  The militiamen, both those who had been in the village and those who      
had been at work on the battery, threw down their spades and ran to         
meet the church procession. Following the battalion that marched along      
the dusty road came priests in their vestments- one little old man          
in a hood with attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and             
officers bore a large, dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover.        
This was the icon that had been brought from and had since accompanied      
the army. Behind, before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with      
bared heads walked, ran, and bowed to the ground.                           
  At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the men who         
had been holding it up by the linen bands attached to it were relieved      
by others, the chanters relit their censers, and service began. The         
hot rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind              
played with the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons                
decorating the icon. The singing did not sound loud under the open          
sky. An immense crowd of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen      
surrounded the icon. Behind the priest and a chanter stood the              
notabilities on a spot reserved for them. A bald general with               
general with a St. George's Cross on his neck stood just behind the         
priest's back, and without crossing himself (he was evidently a             
German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which he                  
considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to arouse the          
patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial        
pose, crossing himself by shaking his hand in front of his chest while      
looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre             
recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not          
look at them- his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious      
expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who         
were all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters,         
who were singing the service for the twentieth time that day, began         
lazily and mechanically to sing: "Save from calamity Thy servants, O        
Mother of God," and the priest and deacon chimed in: "For to Thee           
under God we all flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection,"          
there again kindled in all those faces the same expression of               
consciousness of the solemnity of the impending moment that Pierre had      
seen on the faces at the foot of the hill at Mozhaysk and                   
momentarily on many and many faces he had met that morning; and             
heads were bowed more frequently and hair tossed back, and sighs and        
the sound men made as they crossed themselves were heard.                   
  The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre.      
Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which         
way was made for him, was approaching the icon.                             
                                                   {BK10|CH21 ^paragraph 35}
  It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the position and on his         
way back to Tatarinova had stopped where the service was being held.        
Pierre recognized him at once by his peculiar figure, which                 
distinguished him from everybody else.                                      
  With a long overcoat on his his exceedingly stout,                        
round-shouldered body, with uncovered white head and puffy face             
showing the white ball of the eye he had lost, Kutuzov walked with          
plunging, swaying gait into the crowd and stopped behind the priest.        
He crossed himself with an accustomed movement, bent till he touched        
the ground with his hand, and bowed his white head with a deep sigh.        
Behind Kutuzov was Bennigsen and the suite. Despite the presence of         
the commander in chief, who attracted the attention of all the              
superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers continued their prayers      
without looking at him.                                                     
  When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank           
heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried        
vainly to rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and          
weight. His white head twitched with the effort. At last he rose,           
kissed the icon as a child does with naively pouting lips, and again        
bowed till he touched the ground with his hand. The other generals          
followed his example, then the officers, and after them with excited        
faces, pressing on one another, crowding, panting, and pushing,             
scrambled the soldiers and militiamen.                                      
                                                                            
BK10|CH22                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.                       
  "Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?" said a voice.             
  Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his knees with his        
hand (he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the        
icon), came up to him smiling. Boris was elegantly dressed, with a          
slightly martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long            
coat and like Kutuzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.                 
  Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated himself in           
the shade of the nearest house, on a bench which one Cossack had run        
to fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and         
brilliant suite surrounded him.                                             
  The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng. Pierre           
stopped some thirty paces from Kutuzov, talking to Boris.                   
                                                    {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 5}
  He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the          
position.                                                                   
  "This is what you must do," said Boris. "I will do the honors of the      
camp to you. You will see everything best from where Count Bennigsen        
will be. I am in attendance on him, you know; I'll mention it to            
him. But if you want to ride round the position, come along with us.        
We are just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend        
the night with me and we'll arrange a game of cards. Of course you          
know Dmitri Sergeevich? Those are his quarters," and he pointed to the      
third house in the village of Gorki.                                        
  "But I should like to see the right flank. They say it's very             
strong," said Pierre. "I should like to start from the Moskva River         
and ride round the whole position."                                         
  "Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left             
flank."                                                                     
  "Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski's regiment? Can you point        
it out to me?"                                                              
                                                   {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 10}
  "Prince Andrew's? We shall pass it and I'll take you to him."             
  What about the left flank?" asked Pierre                                  
  "To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only knows what state      
our left flank is in," said Boris confidentially lowering his voice.        
"It is not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify        
that knoll quite differently, but..." Boris shrugged his shoulders,         
"his Serene Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him.           
You see..." but Boris did not finish, for at that moment Kaysarov,          
Kutuzov's adjutant, came up to Pierre. "Ah, Kaysarov!" said Boris,          
addressing him with an unembarrassed smile, "I was just trying to           
explain our position to the count. It is amazing how his Serene             
Highness could so the intentions of the French!"                            
  "You mean the left flank?" asked Kaysarov.                                
  "Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong."                   
                                                   {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 15}
  Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff,          
Boris had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He         
had established himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom         
Boris had been in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskoy an         
invaluable man.                                                             
  In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties:             
Kutuzov's party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Boris            
belonged to the latter and no one else, while showing servile               
respect to Kutuzov, could so create an impression that the old              
fellow was not much good and that Bennigsen managed everything. Now         
the decisive moment of battle had come when Kutuzov would be destroyed      
and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even if Kutuzov won the battle          
it would be felt that everything was done by Bennigsen. In any case         
many great rewards would have to be given for tomorrow's action, and        
new men would come to the front. So Boris was full of nervous vivacity      
all day.                                                                    
  After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to him, and he had        
not time to reply to all the questions about Moscow that were showered      
upon him, or to listen to all that was told him. The faces all              
expressed animation and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the      
cause of the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in         
questions of personal success; his mind, however, was occupied by           
the different expression he saw on other faces- an expression that          
spoke not of personal matters but of the universal questions of life        
and death. Kutuzov noticed Pierre's figure and the group gathered           
round him.                                                                  
  "Call him to me," said Kutuzov.                                           
  An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness' wish, and Pierre          
went toward Kutuzov's bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It      
was Dolokhov.                                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 20}
  "How did that fellow get here?" asked Pierre.                             
  "He's a creature that wriggles in anywhere!" was the answer. "He has      
been degraded, you know. Now he wants to bob up again. He's been            
proposing some scheme or other and has crawled into the enemy's picket      
line at night.... He's a brave fellow."                                     
  Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutuzov.                
  "I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness you might         
send me away or say that you knew what I was reporting, but then I          
shouldn't lose anything..." Dolokhov was saying.                            
  "Yes, yes."                                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 25}
  "But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my               
Fatherland for which I am ready to die."                                    
  "Yes, yes."                                                               
  "And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare         
his skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your         
Serene Highness."                                                           
  "Yes... Yes..." Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more         
and more as he looked at Pierre.                                            
  Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to          
Pierre's side near Kutuzov and in a most natural manner, without            
raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted      
conversation:                                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 30}
  "The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What      
heroism, Count!"                                                            
  Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by           
his Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov's attention would be caught by         
those words, and so it was.                                                 
  "What are you saying about the militia?" he asked Boris.                  
  "Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness- for death- they            
have put on clean shirts."                                                  
  "Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!" said Kutuzov; and he closed      
his eyes and swayed his head. "A matchless people!" he repeated with a      
sigh.                                                                       
                                                   {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 35}
  "So you want to smell gunpowder?" he said to Pierre. "Yes, it's a         
pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife's adorers.          
Is she well? My quarters are at your service."                              
  And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began looking about         
absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.                
  Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew         
Kaysarov, his adjutant's brother.                                           
  "Those verses... those verses of Marin's... how do they go, eh?           
Those he wrote about Gerakov: 'Lectures for the corps inditing'...          
Recite them, recite them!" said he, evidently preparing to laugh.           
  Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm      
of the verses.                                                              
                                                   {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 40}
  When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to him and took his        
hand.                                                                       
  "I am very glad to meet you here, Count," he said aloud,                  
regardless of the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute      
and solemn tone. "On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us        
is fated to survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that         
I regret the misunderstandings that occurred between us and should          
wish you not to have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me."      
  Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to        
him. With tears in his eyes Dolokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.        
  Boris said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to      
Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line.            
  "It will interest you," said he.                                          
                                                   {BK10|CH22 ^paragraph 45}
  "Yes, very much," replied Pierre.                                         
  Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and         
his suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the          
line.                                                                       
                                                                            
BK10|CH23                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which,         
when they had looked it from the hill, the officer had pointed out          
as being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant              
new-mown hay lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into        
the village of Borodino and thence turned to the left, passing an           
enormous number of troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where          
militiamen were digging. This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which        
afterwards became known as the Raevski Redoubt, or the Knoll                
Battery, but Pierre paid no special attention to it. He did not know        
that it would become more memorable to him than any other spot on           
the plain of Borodino.                                                      
  They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the soldiers were        
dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode         
downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if        
by hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the           
furrows of the plowed land, and reached some fleches* which were still      
being dug.                                                                  
-                                                                           
  *A kind of entrenchment.                                                  
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK10|CH23 ^paragraph 5}
  At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevardino      
Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several      
horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon          
or Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of      
horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the          
scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men        
rode away from the mound and disappeared.                                   
  Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began                
explaining the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him,        
straining each faculty to understand the essential points of the            
impending battle, but was mortified to feel that his mental capacity        
was inadequate for the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen         
stopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly          
said to him:                                                                
  "I don't think this interests you?"                                       
  "On the contrary it's very interesting!" replied Pierre not quite         
truthfully.                                                                 
  From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along a road        
winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of           
the wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the         
tramp of the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the         
road in front of them for some time, arousing general attention and         
laughter, and only when several voices shouted at it did it dart to         
one side and disappear in the thicket. After going through the wood         
for about a mile and a half they came out on a glade where troops of        
Tuchkov's corps were stationed to defend the left flank.                    
                                                   {BK10|CH23 ^paragraph 10}
  Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and        
with much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great           
military importance. In front of Tuchkov's troops was some high ground      
not occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake,           
saying that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the            
country around unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the         
generals expressed the same opinion. One in particular declared with        
martial heat that they were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen          
on his own authority ordered the troops to occupy the high ground.          
This disposition on the left flank increased Pierre's doubt of his own      
capacity to understand military matters. Listening to Bennigsen and         
the generals criticizing the position of the troops behind the hill,        
he quite understood them and shared their opinion, but for that very        
reason he could not understand how the man who put them there behind        
the hill could have made so gross and palpable a blunder.                   
  Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen              
supposed, put there to defend the position, but were in a concealed         
position as an ambush, that they should not be seen and might be            
able to strike an approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not         
know this and moved the troops forward according to his own ideas           
without mentioning the matter to the commander in chief.                    
                                                                            
BK10|CH24                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXIV                                                              
-                                                                           
  On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on         
his elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkovo at the          
further end of his regiment's encampment. Through a gap in the              
broken wall he could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty          
year-old birches with their lower branches lopped off, a field on           
which shocks of oats were standing, and some bushes near which rose         
the smoke of campfires- the soldiers' kitchens.                             
  Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed        
to him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable      
as he had done seven years before at Austerlitz.                            
  He had received and given the orders for next day's battle and had        
nothing more to do. But his thoughts- the simplest, clearest, and           
therefore most terrible thoughts- would give him no peace. He knew          
that tomorrow's battle would be the most terrible of all he had             
taken part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of        
death presented itself to him- not in relation to any worldly matter        
or with reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to        
himself, to his own soul- vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as         
a certainty. And from the height of this perception all that had            
previously tormented and preoccupied him suddenly became illumined          
by a cold white light without shadows, without perspective, without         
distinction of outline. All life appeared to him like magic-lantern         
pictures at which he had long been gazing by artificial light               
through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those badly daubed pictures in         
clear daylight and without a glass. "Yes, yes! There they are, those        
false images that agitated, enraptured, and tormented me," said he          
to himself, passing in review the principal pictures of the magic           
lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold white daylight of        
his clear perception of death. "There they are, those rudely painted        
figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good of        
society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself- how important these        
pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they seemed to          
be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the cold             
white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me." The three      
great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his love        
for a woman, his father's death, and the French invasion which had          
overrun half Russia. "Love... that little girl who seemed to me             
brimming over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made          
romantic plans of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I             
was!" he said aloud bitterly. "Ah me! I believed in some ideal love         
which was to keep her faithful to me for the whole year of my absence!      
Like the gentle dove in the fable she was to pine apart from me....         
But it was much simpler really.... It was all very simple and               
horrible."                                                                  
  "When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his        
land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside,         
unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his             
path, and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess        
Mary says it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when        
he is not here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is      
the trial intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And          
tomorrow I shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one      
of our own men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as        
one of them did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by          
head and heels and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under          
their noses, and new conditions of life will arise, which will seem         
quite ordinary to others and about which I shall know nothing. I shall      
not exist..."                                                               
  He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with             
their motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. "To die...        
to be killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this           
should still be, but no me...."                                             
                                                    {BK10|CH24 ^paragraph 5}
  And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the         
smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed      
terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose            
quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.                     
  After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. "Who's         
that?" he cried.                                                            
  The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov's squadron              
commander, but now from lack of officers a battalion commander,             
shyly entered the shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental           
paymaster.                                                                  
  Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come        
about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss        
them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.              
  "Devil take it!" said the voice of a man stumbling over something.        
                                                   {BK10|CH24 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                                  
                                                   {BK10|CH24 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to see them,        
but missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow."                
                                                                            
BK10|CH25                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXV                                                               
-                                                                           
  The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently      
reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and          
have tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed      
with surprise at Pierre's huge stout figure and listened to his talk        
of Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden.          
Prince Andrew remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding         
that Pierre addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured               
battalion commander.                                                        
  "So you understand the whole position of our troops?" Prince              
Andrew interrupted him.                                                     
  "Yes- that is, how do you mean?" said Pierre. "Not being a                
military man I can't say I have understood it fully, but I                  
understand the general position."                                           
  "Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may," said      
Prince Andrew.                                                              
  "Oh!" said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at           
Prince Andrew. "Well, and what do think of Kutuzov's appointment?"          
he asked.                                                                   
                                                    {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 5}
  "I was very glad of his appointment, that's all I know," replied          
Prince Andrew.                                                              
  "And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are         
saying heaven knows what about him.... What do you think of him?"           
  "Ask them," replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.               
  Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly interrogative          
smile with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.            
  "We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your          
excellency," said Timokhin timidly, and continually turning to              
glance at his colonel.                                                      
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 10}
  "Why so?" asked Pierre.                                                   
  "Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you.            
Why, when we were retreating from Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick      
or a wisp of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would      
get it all; wasn't it so, your excellency?" and again Timokhin              
turned to the prince. "But we daren't. In our regiment two officers         
were court-martialed for that kind of thing. But when his Serenity          
took command everything became straight forward. Now we see light..."       
  "Then why was it forbidden?"                                              
  Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to            
answer such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.      
  "Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the        
enemy," said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. "It is very sound: one      
can't permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to             
marauding. At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French might        
outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand         
this," cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him      
involuntarily: "he could not understand that there, for the first           
time, we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit        
in the men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the            
French for two days, and that that success had increased our                
strength tenfold. He ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and         
losses went for nothing. He had no thought of betraying us, he tried        
to do the best he could, he thought out everything, and that is why he      
is unsuitable. He is unsuitable now, just because he plans out              
everything very thoroughly and accurately as every German has to.           
How can I explain?... Well, say your father has a German valet, and he      
is a splendid valet and satisfies your father's requirements better         
than you could, then it's all right to let him serve. But if your           
father is mortally sick you'll send the valet away and attend to            
your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands, and will              
soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could. So it         
has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could             
serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in              
danger she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have been        
making him out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the            
only result will be that afterwards, ashamed of their false                 
accusations, they will make him out a hero or a genius instead of a         
traitor, and that will be still more unjust. He is an honest and            
very punctilious German."                                                   
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                         
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 20}
  "And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?" he remarked.         
  "Yes," replied Prince Andrew, "but with this little difference, that      
in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are         
not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is        
always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than         
one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division         
and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies        
of troops can never be known to anyone. Believe me," he went on, "if        
things depended on arrangements made by the staff, I should be there        
making arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve          
here in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider that on us        
tomorrow's battle will depend and not on those others.... Success           
never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or         
even on numbers, and least of all on position."                             
  "But on what then?"                                                       
  "On the feeling that is in me and in him," he pointed to Timokhin,        
"and in each soldier."                                                      
  Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his commander in         
alarm and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity      
Prince Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from      
expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.                  
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 25}
  "A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it! Why did we        
lose the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal          
to ours, but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the        
battle, and we did lose it. And we said so because we had nothing to        
fight for there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as      
we could. 'We've lost, so let us run,' and we ran. If we had not            
said that till the evening, heaven knows what might not have happened.      
But tomorrow we shan't say it! You talk about our position, the left        
flank weak and the right flank too extended," he went on. "That's           
all nonsense, there's nothing of the kind. But what awaits us               
tomorrow? A hundred million most diverse chances which will be decided      
on the instant by the fact that our men or theirs run or do not run,        
and that this man or that man is killed, but all that is being done at      
present is only play. The fact is that those men with whom you have         
ridden round the position not only do not help matters, but hinder.         
They are only concerned with their own petty interests."                    
  "At such a moment?" said Pierre reproachfully.                            
  "At such a moment!" Prince Andrew repeated. "To them it is only a         
moment affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an           
extra cross or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a      
hundred thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to        
fight, and the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight      
and the side that fights more fiercely and spares itself least will         
win. And if you like I will tell you that whatever happens and              
whatever muddles those at the top may make, we shall win tomorrow's         
battle. Tomorrow, happen what may, we shall win!"                           
  "There now, your excellency! That's the truth, the real truth," said      
Timokhin. "Who would spare himself now? The soldiers in my                  
battalion, believe me, wouldn't drink their vodka! 'It's not the day        
for that!' they say."                                                       
  All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out of the         
shed with them, giving final orders to the adjutant. After they had         
gone Pierre approached Prince Andrew and was about to start a               
conversation when they heard the clatter of three horses' hoofs on the      
road not far from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince            
Andrew recognized Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack.         
They rode close by continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew                
involuntarily heard these words:                                            
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 30}
  "Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht        
genug Preis geben,"* said one of them.                                      
-                                                                           
  *"The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently commend          
that view."                                                                 
-                                                                           
  "Oh, ja," said the other, "der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwachen,      
so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung         
nehmen."*                                                                   
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 35}
-                                                                           
  *"Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of course one          
cannot take into account the loss of private individuals."                  
-                                                                           
  "Oh, no," agreed the other.                                               
  "Extend widely!" said Prince Andrew with an angry snort, when they        
had ridden past. "In that 'extend' were my father, son, and sister, at      
Bald Hills. That's all the same to him! That's what I was saying to         
you- those German gentlemen won't win the battle tomorrow but will          
only make all the mess they can, because they have nothing in their         
German heads but theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven't in        
their hearts the one thing needed tomorrow- that which Timokhin has.        
They have yielded up all Europe to him, and have now come to teach us.      
Fine teachers!" and again his voice grew shrill.                            
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 40}
  "So you think we shall win tomorrow's battle?" asked Pierre.              
  "Yes, yes," answered Prince Andrew absently. "One thing I would do        
if I had the power," he began again, "I would not take prisoners.           
Why take prisoners? It's chivalry! The French have destroyed my home        
and are on their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are          
outraging me every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are      
all criminals. And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army. They              
should be executed! Since they are my foes they cannot be my                
friends, whatever may have been said at Tilsit."                            
  "Yes, yes," muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince          
Andrew. "I quite agree with you!"                                           
  The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk hill and           
all that day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He        
now understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the      
impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and         
stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up for      
him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in          
physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen,      
and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly,           
and as it were lightheartedly.                                              
  "Not take prisoners," Prince Andrew continued: "That by itself would      
quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have         
played at war- that's what's vile! We play at magnanimity and all that      
stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and        
sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed:         
she is so kind-hearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating      
the calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of      
chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on.         
It's all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they           
humbugged us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people's             
houses, issue false paper money, and worst of all they kill my              
children and my father, and then talk of rules of war and                   
magnanimity to foes! Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who      
has come to this as I have through the same sufferings..."                  
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 45}
  Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to him whether or      
not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his      
speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a         
few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips        
quivered as he began speaking.                                              
  "If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war        
only when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then           
there would not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended Michael          
Ivanovich. And when there was a war, like this one, it would be war!        
And then the determination of the troops would be quite different.          
Then all these Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading           
would not follow him into Russia, and we should not go to fight in          
Austria and Prussia without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the        
most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not        
play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and         
seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be         
war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the        
idle and frivolous. The military calling is the most highly honored.        
  "But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are         
the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of        
war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a           
country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army,      
and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the            
military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline,             
idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in           
spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone.           
All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he           
who kills most people receives the highest rewards.                         
  "They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they        
kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services        
for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number),         
and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they            
have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look          
at them and hear them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill,                
piercing voice. "Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to        
live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it doesn't        
do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil....           
Ah, well, it's not for long!" he added.                                     
  "However, you're sleepy, and it's time for me to sleep. Go back to        
Gorki!" said Prince Andrew suddenly.                                        
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 50}
  "Oh no!" Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with frightened,        
compassionate eyes.                                                         
  "Go, go! Before a battle one must have one's sleep out," repeated         
Prince Andrew.                                                              
  He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed him.                 
 "Good-by, be off!" he shouted. "Whether we meet again or not..."           
and turning away hurriedly he entered the shed.                             
  It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out whether the            
expression of Prince Andrew's face was angry or tender.                     
  For some time he stood in silence considering whether he should           
follow him or go away. "No, he does not want it!" Pierre concluded.         
"And I know that this is our last meeting!" He sighed deeply and            
rode back to Gorki.                                                         
                                                   {BK10|CH25 ^paragraph 55}
  On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a rug, but he           
could not sleep.                                                            
  He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his                  
imagination. On one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly          
recalled an evening in Petersburg. Natasha with animated and excited        
face was telling him how she had gone to look for mushrooms the             
previous summer and had lost her way in the big forest. She                 
incoherently described the depths of the forest, her feelings, and a        
talk with a beekeeper she met, and constantly interrupted her story to      
say: "No, I can't! I'm not telling it right; no, you don't                  
understand," though he encouraged her by saying that he did                 
understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to say. But         
Natasha was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they did        
not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced that         
day and wished to convey. "He was such a delightful old man, and it         
was so dark in the forest... and he had such kind... No, I can't            
describe it," she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew              
smiled now the same happy smile as then when he had looked into her         
eyes. "I understood her," he thought. "I not only understood her,           
but it was just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that           
frankness of soul- that very soul of hers which seemed to be                
fettered by her body- it was that soul I loved in her... loved so           
strongly and happily..." and suddenly he remembered how his love had        
ended. "He did not need anything of that kind. He neither saw nor           
understood anything of the sort. He only saw in her a pretty and fresh      
young girl, with whom he did not deign to unite his fate. And I?...         
and he is still alive and gay!"                                             
  Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned him, and again           
began pacing up and down in front of the shed.                              
                                                                            
BK10|CH26                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXVI                                                              
-                                                                           
  On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de Beausset,          
prefect of the French Emperor's palace, arrived at Napoleon's quarters      
at Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier, the former from Paris and the              
latter from Madrid.                                                         
  Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a box he had            
brought for the Emperor to be carried before him and entered the first      
compartment of Napoleon's tent, where he began opening the box while        
conversing with Napoleon's aides-de-camp who surrounded him.                
  Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance talking          
to some generals of his acquaintance.                                       
  The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was                 
finishing his toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting, he presented now      
his back and now his plump hairy chest to the brush with which his          
valet was rubbing him down. Another valet, with his finger over the         
mouth of a bottle, was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor's           
pampered body with an expression which seemed to say that he alone          
knew where and how much Eau de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon's      
short hair was wet and matted on the forehead, but his face, though         
puffy and yellow, expressed physical satisfaction. "Go on, harder,          
go on!" he muttered to the valet who was rubbing him, slightly              
twitching and grunting. An aide-de-camp, who had entered the bedroom        
to report to the Emperor the number of prisoners taken in                   
yesterday's action, was standing by the door after delivering his           
message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon, frowning, looked        
at him from under his brows.                                                
  "No prisoners!" said he, repeating the aide-de-camp's words. "They        
are forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the               
Russian army.... Go on... harder, harder!" he muttered, hunching his        
back and presenting his fat shoulders.                                      
                                                    {BK10|CH26 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                    
                                                   {BK10|CH26 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                                                     
                                                   {BK10|CH26 ^paragraph 15}
  But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say something of         
this kind, and though in his lucid moments he knew it was untrue, he        
was pleased to hear it from him. Again he honored him by touching           
his ear.                                                                    
  "I am very sorry to have made you travel so far," said he.                
  "Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates of           
Moscow," replied de Beausset.                                               
  Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absentmindedly, glanced to the      
right. An aide-de-camp approached with gliding steps and offered him a      
gold snuffbox, which he took.                                               
  "Yes, it has happened luckily for you," he said, raising the open         
snuffbox to his nose. "You are fond of travel, and in three days you        
will see Moscow. You surely did not expect to see that Asiatic              
capital. You will have a pleasant journey."                                 
                                                   {BK10|CH26 ^paragraph 20}
  De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste for travel      
(of which he had not till then been aware).                                 
  "Ha, what's this?" asked Napoleon, noticing that all the courtiers        
were looking at something concealed under a cloth.                          
  With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and without               
turning his back to the Emperor retired two steps, twitching off the        
cloth at the same time, and said:                                           
  "A present to Your Majesty from the Empress."                             
  It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of the son         
borne to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, the boy        
whom for some reason everyone called "The King of Rome."                    
                                                   {BK10|CH26 ^paragraph 25}
  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.          
                                                   {BK10|CH26 ^paragraph 30}
  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:                                                                     
-                                                                           
                                                   {BK10|CH26 ^paragraph 35}
  Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Victory depends      
on you. It is essential for us; it will give us all we need:                
comfortable quarters and a speedy return to our country. Behave as you      
did at Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our                
remotest posterity recall your achievements this day with pride. Let        
it be said of each of you: "He was in the great battle before Moscow!"      
-                                                                           
  "Before Moscow!" repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who      
was so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of         
the tent to where the horses stood saddled.                                 
  "Your Majesty is too kind!" replied de Beausset to the invitation to      
accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride         
and was afraid of doing so.                                                 
  But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount.        
When Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before        
his son's portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned.                     
                                                   {BK10|CH26 ^paragraph 40}
  "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.                                                                      
                                                                            
BK10|CH27                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXVII                                                             
-                                                                           
  On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us, Napoleon        
spent the whole day on horseback inspecting the locality,                   
considering plans submitted to him by his marshals, and personally          
giving commands to his generals.                                            
  The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolocha           
had been dislocated by the capture of the Shevardino Redoubt on the         
twenty-fourth, and part of the line- the left flank- had been drawn         
back. That part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it           
the ground was more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to        
anyone, military or not, that it was here the French should attack. It      
would seem that not much consideration was needed to reach this             
conclusion, nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the           
Emperor and his marshals, nor was there any need of that special and        
supreme quality called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to          
Napoleon; yet the historians who described the event later and the men      
who then surrounded Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise.            
  Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality with a             
profound air and in silence, nodded with approval or shook his head         
dubiously, and without communicating to the generals around him the         
profound course of ideas which guided his decisions merely gave them        
his final conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to a         
suggestion from Davout, who was now called Prince d'Eckmuhl, to turn        
the Russian left wing, Napoleon said it should not be done, without         
explaining why not. To a proposal made by General Campan (who was to        
attack the fleches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon        
agreed, though the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to            
remark that a movement through the woods was dangerous and might            
disorder the division.                                                      
  Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino Redoubt,             
Napoleon pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots          
where two batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against           
the Russian entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them,         
the field artillery should be placed.                                       
  After giving these and other commands he returned to his tent, and        
the dispositions for the battle were written down from his dictation.       
                                                    {BK10|CH27 ^paragraph 5}
  These dispositions, of which the French historians write with             
enthusiasm and other historians with profound respect, were as              
follows:                                                                    
-                                                                           
  At dawn the two new batteries established during the night on the         
plain occupied by the Prince d'Eckmuhl will open fire on the                
opposing batteries of the enemy.                                            
  At the same time the commander of the artillery of the 1st Corps,         
General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan's division and all           
the howitzers of Dessaix's and Friant's divisions, will move                
forward, open fire, and overwhelm with shellfire the enemy's                
battery, against which will operate:                                        
-                                                                           
                                                   {BK10|CH27 ^paragraph 10}
          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.                                                          
                                                   {BK10|CH27 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouche,          
will place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all,          
on the flanks of the battery that is to bombard the entrenchment on         
the left, which will have forty guns in all directed against it.            
  General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all      
the howitzers of the Guard's artillery against either one or other          
of the entrenchments.                                                       
  During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the         
wood on the village and turn the enemy's position.                          
  General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first              
fortification.                                                              
                                                   {BK10|CH27 ^paragraph 20}
  After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given          
in accordance with the enemy's movements.                                   
  The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of         
the right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand's division and        
of the vice-King's division will open a heavy fire on seeing the            
attack commence on the right wing.                                          
  The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three              
bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand's and Gibrard's            
divisions, which under his leadership will be directed against the          
redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.                     
  All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et        
methode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.                    
     The Imperial Camp near Mozhaysk,                                       
                                                   {BK10|CH27 ^paragraph 25}
     September, 6, 1812.                                                    
-                                                                           
  These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one            
allows oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his      
genius, related to Napoleon's orders to deal with four points- four         
different orders. Not one of these was, or could be, carried out.           
  In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the      
spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which        
were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and      
shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be        
done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not        
carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air until      
the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon's instructions, moved them      
forward.                                                                    
  The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through      
the wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done        
and was not done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village             
through the wood, met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and      
did not turn the Russian position.                                          
                                                   {BK10|CH27 ^paragraph 30}
  The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to         
seize the first fortification. General Campan's division did not seize      
the first fortification but was driven back, for on emerging from           
the wood it had to reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was            
unaware.                                                                    
  The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village               
(Borodino) and cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same            
heights as Morand's and Gdrard's divisions (for whose movements no          
directions are given), which under his leadership will be directed          
against the redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.         
  As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible          
sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders      
given him, he was to advance from the left through Borodino to the          
redoubt while the divisions of Morand and Gerard were to advance            
simultaneously from the front.                                              
  All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could      
not be executed. After passing through Borodino the vice-King was           
driven back to the Kolocha and could get no farther; while the              
divisions of Morand and Gerard did not take the redoubt but were            
driven back, and the redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle        
by the cavalry (a thing probably unforeseen and not heard of by             
Napoleon). So not one of the orders in the disposition was, or could        
be, executed. But in the disposition it is said that, after the             
fight has commenced in this manner, orders will be given in accordance      
with the enemy's movements, and so it might be supposed that all            
necessary arrangements would be made by Napoleon during the battle.         
But this was not and could not be done, for during the whole battle         
Napoleon was so far away that, as appeared later, he could not know         
the course of the battle and not one of his orders during the fight         
could be executed.                                                          
                                                                            
BK10|CH28                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXVIII                                                            
-                                                                           
  Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of             
Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a          
cold the orders he gave before and during the battle would have been        
still more full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face      
of the world have been changed. To historians who believe that              
Russia was shaped by the will of one man- Peter the Great- and that         
France from a republic became an empire and French armies went to           
Russia at the will of one man- Napoleon- to say that Russia remained a      
power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August        
may seem logical and convincing.                                            
  If it had depended on Napoleon's will to fight or not to fight the        
battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended          
on his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of           
his will might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who            
omitted to bring Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth         
would have been the savior of Russia. Along that line of thought            
such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction            
Voltaire made in jest (without knowing what he was jesting at) when he      
saw that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX's            
stomach being deranged. But to men who do not admit that Russia was         
formed by the will of one man, Peter I, or that the French Empire           
was formed and the war with Russia begun by the will of one man,            
Napoleon, that argument seems not merely untrue and irrational, but         
contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes historic      
events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of           
human events is predetermined from on high- depends on the coincidence      
of the wills of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon's      
influence on the course of these events is purely external and              
fictitious.                                                                 
  Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the                
Massacre of St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX's will, though        
he gave the order for it and thought it was done as a result of that        
order; and strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of          
eighty thousand men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon's will, though      
he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it        
was done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions               
appear, yet human dignity- which tells me that each of us is, if not        
more at least not less a man than the great Napoleon- demands the           
acceptance of that solution of the question, and historic                   
investigation abundantly confirms it.                                       
  At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one.      
That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who              
killed people.                                                              
  The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of           
Borodino not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition.        
The whole army- French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch- hungry,         
ragged, and weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army             
blocking their road to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be           
drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they         
would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because      
it was inevitable.                                                          
                                                    {BK10|CH28 ^paragraph 5}
  When they heard Napoleon's proclamation offering them, as                 
compensation for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about         
their having been in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive             
l'Empereur!" just as they had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of      
the portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy           
stick, and just as they would have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any          
nonsense that might be told them. There was nothing left for them to        
do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go to fight, in order to get food         
and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it was not because of                  
Napoleon's commands that they killed their fellow men.                      
  And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for        
none of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know      
what was going on before him. So the way in which these people              
killed one another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred          
independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands      
of people who took part in the common action. It only seemed to             
Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question            
whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than         
the cold of the least of the transport soldiers.                            
  Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was         
the cause of his dispositions not being as well planned as on former        
occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as         
previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's            
cold on the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.                         
  The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even           
better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories.           
His pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than                 
formerly, but much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders         
only seem worse than previous ones because the battle of Borodino           
was the first Napoleon did not win. The profoundest and most excellent      
dispositions and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist         
criticizes them with looks oks importance, when they relate to a            
battle that has been lost, and the very worst dispositions and              
orders seem very good, and serious people fill whole volumes to             
demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a battle that has been        
won.                                                                        
  The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of                  
Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of composition,         
but still they were criticized- criticized for their very                   
perfection, for their excessive minuteness.                                 
                                                   {BK10|CH28 ^paragraph 10}
  Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as                
representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other      
battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he           
inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did         
not contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the         
field of battle, but with his great tact and military experience            
carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.      
                                                                            
BK10|CH29                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXIX                                                              
-                                                                           
  On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon              
remarked:                                                                   
  "The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!"                  
  Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to        
him about Paris and about some changes he meant to make the Empress'        
household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details           
relating to the court.                                                      
  He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset's love          
of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon      
who knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on           
his apron while a patient is being strapped to the operating table.         
"The matter is in my hands and is clear and definite in my head.            
When the times comes to set to work I shall do it as no one else            
could, but now I can jest, and the more I jest and the calmer I am the      
more tranquil and confident you ought to be, and the more amazed at my      
genius."                                                                    
  Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest          
before the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next          
day. He was so much interested in that task that he was unable to           
sleep, and in spite of his cold which had grown worse from the              
dampness of the evening, he went into the large division of the tent        
at three o'clock in the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked          
whether the Russians had not withdrawn, and was told that the               
enemy's fires were still in the same places. He nodded approval.            
                                                    {BK10|CH29 ^paragraph 5}
  The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.                            
  "Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?" Napoleon      
asked him.                                                                  
  "Without doubt, sire," replied Rapp.                                      
  Napoleon looked at him.                                                   
  "Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at               
Smolensk?" continued Rapp. "The wine is drawn and must be drunk."           
                                                   {BK10|CH29 ^paragraph 10}
  Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head          
on his hand.                                                                
  "This poor army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly        
since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always         
said so and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the      
Guards are intact?" he remarked interrogatively.                            
  "Yes, sire," replied Rapp.                                                
  Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his          
watch. He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was        
impossible to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for         
the orders had all been given and were now being executed.                  
  "Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of           
the Guards?" asked Napoleon sternly.                                        
                                                   {BK10|CH29 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, sire."                                                              
  "The rice too?"                                                           
  Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor's order about the rice,        
but Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing          
that his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch.          
Napoleon ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently         
sipped his own.                                                             
  "I have neither taste nor smell," he remarked, sniffing at his            
glass. "This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine- what is the        
good of medicine when it can't cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these         
lozenges but they don't help at all. What can doctors cure? One             
can't cure anything. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized      
for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it      
defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by                   
encumbering it with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that         
should go for a certain time; watchmaker cannot open it, he can only        
adjust it by fumbling, and that blindfold.... Yes, our body is just         
a machine for living, that is all."                                         
  And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was             
fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.                    
                                                   {BK10|CH29 ^paragraph 20}
  "Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?" asked he. "It is the           
art of being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That's all."        
  Rapp made no reply.                                                       
  "Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!" said Napoleon. "We         
shall see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three        
weeks and did not once mount a horse to inspect his                         
entrenchments.... We shall see!"                                            
  He looked at his watch. It was still only four o'clock. He did not        
feel sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do.      
He rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went      
out of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible        
moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were             
dimly burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of         
the Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and         
the rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to      
take up their positions were clearly audible.                               
  Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires           
and listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman        
in a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had          
drawn himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon      
stopped in front of him.                                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH29 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                          
                                                   {BK10|CH29 ^paragraph 30}
-                                                                           
  At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino.             
  It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud           
lay in the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out        
in the faint morning light.                                                 
  On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died          
away in the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a         
third report shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed                
solemnly near by on the right.                                              
  The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang      
out and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another.       
                                                   {BK10|CH29 ^paragraph 35}
  Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he        
dismounted. The game had begun.                                             
                                                                            
BK10|CH30                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXX                                                               
-                                                                           
  On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre             
ordered his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the      
morning, and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a           
corner Boris had given up to him.                                           
  Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already         
left the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his         
groom was shaking him.                                                      
  "Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!" he kept              
repeating pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without      
looking at him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up.      
  "What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked, waking up.                
  "Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged soldier. "All the         
gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past          
long ago."                                                                  
                                                    {BK10|CH30 ^paragraph 5}
  Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was          
bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from        
behind a cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still          
half broken by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on        
the dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on        
the windows, the fence, and on Pierre's horses standing before the          
hut. The roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant            
accompanied by a Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.                         
  "It's time, Count; it's time!" cried the adjutant.                        
  Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down         
the street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of            
battle the day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there,         
members of the staff could be heard conversing in French, and               
Kutuzov's gray head in a white cap with a red band was visible, his         
gray nape sunk between his shoulders. He was looking through a field        
glass down the highroad before him.                                         
  Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before         
him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired          
from that spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of          
troops and covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting          
rays of the bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre,          
cast upon it through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of           
rosy, golden tinted light and long dark shadows. The forest at the          
farthest extremity of the panorama seemed carved in some precious           
stone of a yellowish-green color; its undulating outline was                
silhouetted against the horizon and was pierced beyond Valuevo by           
the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops. Nearer at hand glittered         
golden cornfields interspersed with copses. There were troops to be         
seen everywhere, in front and to the right and left. All this was           
vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed Pierre most of all      
was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino and the hollows on      
both sides of the Kolocha.                                                  
  Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially        
to the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls          
into the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve,      
and to become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and               
magically colored and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns            
mingled with this mist, and over the whole expanse and through that         
mist the rays of the morning sun were reflected, flashing back like         
lightning from the water, from the dew, and from the bayonets of the        
troops crowded together by the riverbanks and in Borodino. A white          
church could be seen through the mist, and here and there the roofs of      
huts in Borodino as well as dense masses of soldiers, or green              
ammunition chests and ordnance. And all this moved, or seemed to move,      
as the smoke and mist spread out over the whole space. Just as in           
the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so along the entire line           
outside and above it and especially in the woods and fields to the          
left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high ground, clouds          
of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now         
singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others dense,              
which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the          
whole expanse.                                                              
                                                   {BK10|CH30 ^paragraph 10}
  These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of sound of           
the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.                      
  "Puff!"- suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging         
from violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!" came the report a        
second later.                                                               
  "Puff! puff!"- and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending      
together; and "boom, boom!" came the sounds confirming what the eye         
had seen.                                                                   
  Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a           
round compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke         
floating to one side, and- "puff" (with a pause)- "puff, puff!"             
three and then four more appeared and then from each, with the same         
interval- "boom- boom, boom!" came the fine, firm, precise sounds in        
reply. It seemed as if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and                 
sometimes stood still while woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran      
past them. From the left, over fields and bushes, those large balls of      
smoke were continually appearing followed by their solemn reports,          
while nearer still, in the hollows and woods, there burst from the          
muskets small cloudlets that had no time to become balls, but had           
their little echoes in just the same way. "Trakh-ta-ta-takh!" came the      
frequent crackle of musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in            
comparison with the reports of the cannon.                                  
  Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets,        
that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and           
his suite, to compare his impressions with those of others. They            
were all looking at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed        
to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were now shining            
with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before        
and had fully understood after his talk with Prince Andrew.                 
                                                   {BK10|CH30 ^paragraph 15}
  "Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!" Kutuzov was           
saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from           
the battlefield.                                                            
  Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way        
down the knoll.                                                             
  "To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly in reply to        
one of the staff who asked where he was going.                              
  "I'll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and followed the              
general.                                                                    
  The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went        
to his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the           
quietest, clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out         
his toes pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his          
spectacles were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and           
reins, he galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to         
smile as they watched him from the knoll.                                   
                                                                            
BK10|CH31                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXI                                                              
-                                                                           
  Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was               
galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him,      
galloped in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He          
tried to pass either in front of them or to the right or left, but          
there were soldiers everywhere, all with expression and busy with some      
unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same           
dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white          
hat, who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under           
his horse's hoofs.                                                          
  "Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted          
at him.                                                                     
  Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,      
bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying            
horse, galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.         
  There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood               
firing. Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had            
come to the bridge across the Kolocha between Gorki and Borodino,           
which the French (having occupied Borodino) were attacking in the           
first phase of the battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front      
of him and that soldiers were doing something on both sides of it           
and in the meadow, among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken        
no notice of amid the smoke of the campfires the day before; but            
despite the incessant firing going on there he had no idea that this        
was the field of battle. He did not notice the sound of the bullets         
whistling from every side, or the projectiles that flew over him,           
did not see the enemy on the other side of the river, and for a long        
time did not notice the killed and wounded, though many fell near him.      
He looked about him with a smile which did not leave his face.              
  "Why's that fellow in front of the line?" shouted somebody at him         
again.                                                                      
                                                    {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 5}
  "To the left!... Keep to the right!" the men shouted to him.              
  Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of             
Raevski's adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at            
him, evidently also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing           
him he nodded.                                                              
  "How have you got here?" he said, and galloped on.                        
  Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid      
of getting in someone's way again, galloped after the adjutant.             
  "What's happening here? May I come with you?" he asked.                   
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 10}
  "One moment, one moment!" replied the adjutant, and riding up to a        
stout colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message      
and then addressed Pierre.                                                  
  "Why have you come here, Count?" he asked with a smile. "Still            
inquisitive?"                                                               
  "Yes, yes," assented Pierre.                                              
  But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.                      
  "Here it's tolerable," said he, "but with Bagration on the left           
flank they're getting it frightfully hot."                                  
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 20}
  Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the          
adjutant to Raevski's Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the                  
adjutant's and jolted him at every step.                                    
  "You don't seem to be used to riding, Count?" remarked the adjutant.      
  "No it's not that, but her action seems so jerky," said Pierre in         
a puzzled tone.                                                             
  "Why... she's wounded!" said the adjutant. "In the off foreleg above      
the knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your            
baptism of fire!"                                                           
  Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the               
artillery which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening         
them with the noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was      
cool and quiet, with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant             
dismounted and walked up the hill on foot.                                  
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 25}
  "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."                                          
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 30}
  Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not         
meet again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm        
that day.                                                                   
  The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards         
known to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raevski's Redoubt, and        
to the French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du        
centre, around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French           
regarded as the key to the whole position.                                  
  This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which                
trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that          
were being fired through openings in the earthwork.                         
  In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also          
fired incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When            
ascending that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which          
small trenches had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was      
the most important point of the battle.                                     
  On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought          
it one of the least significant parts of the field.                         
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 35}
  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."                                                                   
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 40}
  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.                             
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 45}
  Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.      
They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and         
the discovery that he did so delighted them.                                
  "It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's                
wonderful! There's a gentleman for you!"                                    
  "To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered             
round Pierre.                                                               
  The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the             
first or second time and therefore treated both his superiors and           
the men with great precision and formality.                                 
  The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing          
more intense over the whole field, especially to the left where             
Bagration's fleches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing      
made it almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole      
attention was engrossed by watching the family circle- separated            
from all else- formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious      
feeling of joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the        
battlefield was now replaced by another, especially since he had            
seen that soldier lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the           
slope of the trench, he observed the faces of those around him.             
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 50}
  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.                                         
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 55}
  "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.                                              
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 60}
  "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.                         
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 65}
  As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly        
and rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in                  
opposition to what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire           
growing more and more intense glowed in the faces of these men.             
  Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned          
to know what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching      
this fire which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was             
flaming up in the same way in his own soul.                                 
  At ten o'clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in             
front of the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet retreated. From        
the battery they could be seen running back past it carrying their          
wounded on their muskets. A general with his suite came to the              
battery, and after speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look        
and went away again having ordered the infantry supports behind the         
battery to lie down, so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from      
amid the ranks of infantry to the right of the battery came the             
sound of a drum and shouts of command, and from the battery one saw         
how those ranks of infantry moved forward.                                  
  Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly            
struck by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was        
walking backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.                        
  The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their            
long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few      
minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back         
from that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently        
in the battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed.      
Around the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No           
one any longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted          
at for being in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid           
strides from one gun to another with a frowning face. The young             
officer, with his face still more flushed, commanded the men more           
scrupulously than ever. The soldiers handed up the charges, turned,         
loaded, and did their business with strained smartness. They gave           
little jumps as they walked, as though they were on springs.                
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 70}
  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.                                                        
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 75}
  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.                                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 80}
  "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.                                                                     
                                                   {BK10|CH31 ^paragraph 85}
  "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.                                      
                                                                            
BK10|CH32                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the           
battery, as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him.        
  On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing            
something there but that no shots were being fired from the battery.        
He had no time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior             
officer lying on the earth wall with his back turned as if he were          
examining something down below and that one of the soldiers he had          
noticed before was struggling forward shouting "Brothers!" and              
trying to free himself from some men who were holding him by the            
arm. He also saw something else that was strange.                           
  But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed,          
that the soldier shouting "Brothers!" was a prisoner, and that another      
man had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had          
he run into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in      
a blue uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something.             
Instinctively guarding against the shock- for they had been running         
together at full speed before they saw one another- Pierre put out his      
hands and seized the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one        
hand and by the throat with the other. The officer, dropping his            
sword, seized Pierre by his collar.                                         
  For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another's         
unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and          
what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him         
prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently          
more inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's          
strong hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever         
tighter and tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when         
just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled,           
and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer's head had been torn        
off, so swiftly had he ducked it.                                           
  Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further          
thought as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to        
the battery and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead           
and wounded who, it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he        
reached the foot of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian        
soldiers who, stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and         
wildly toward the battery. (This was the attack for which Ermolov           
claimed the credit, declaring that only his courage and good luck made      
such a feat possible: it was the attack in which he was said to have        
thrown some St. George's Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery      
for the first soldiers to take who got there.)                              
                                                    {BK10|CH32 ^paragraph 5}
  The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops              
shouting "Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it           
was difficult to call them back.                                            
  The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them           
was a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds          
of wounded- some known to Pierre and some unknown- Russians and             
French, with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were        
carried on stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto           
the knoll where he had spent over an hour, and of that family circle        
which had received him as a member he did not find a single one. There      
were many dead whom he did not know, but some he recognized. The young      
officer still sat in the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood          
at the edge of the earth wall. The red-faced man was still                  
twitching, but they did not carry him away.                                 
  Pierre ran down the slope once more.                                      
  "Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have      
done!" he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers      
moving from the battlefield.                                                
  But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front         
and especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be          
seething in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not          
diminish, but even increased to desperation like a man who,                 
straining himself, shrieks with all his remaining strength.                 
                                                                            
BK10|CH33                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXIII                                                            
-                                                                           
  The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought within the          
seven thousand feet between Borodino and Bagration's fleches. Beyond        
that space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the          
Russians with Uvarov's cavalry at midday, and on the other side,            
beyond Utitsa, Poniatowski's collision with Tuchkov; but these two          
were detached and feeble actions in comparison with what took place in      
the center of the battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the        
fleches, beside the wood, the chief action of the day took place on an      
open space visible from both sides and was fought in the simplest           
and most artless way.                                                       
  The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred      
guns.                                                                       
  Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,          
Campan's and Dessaix's, advanced from the French right, while               
Murat's troops advanced on Borodino from their left.                        
  From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the               
fleches were two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as      
the crow flies to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was         
happening there, especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid         
the whole locality. The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing            
against the fleches could only be seen till they had entered the            
hollow that lay between them and the fleches. As soon as they had           
descended into that hollow, the smoke of the guns and musketry on           
the fleches grew so dense that it covered the whole approach on that        
side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could be caught of something         
black- probably men- and at times the glint of bayonets. But whether        
they were moving or stationary, whether they were French or Russian,        
could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.                        
  The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight          
into Napoleon's face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked          
at the fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it           
looked as if the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved.        
Sometimes shouts were heard through the firing, but it was                  
impossible to tell what was being done there.                               
                                                    {BK10|CH33 ^paragraph 5}
  Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and        
in its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and               
sometimes Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he         
could not tell where what he had seen was.                                  
  He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.           
  Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed                
intently at the battlefield.                                                
  But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from        
where he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which          
some of his generals had taken their stand, but even from the               
fleches themselves- in which by this time there were now Russian and        
now French soldiers, alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive,         
frightened, or maddened- even at those fleches themselves it was            
impossible to make out what was taking place. There for several             
hours amid incessant cannon and musketry fire, now Russians were            
seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now infantry, and now cavalry: they        
appeared, fired, fell, collided, not knowing what to do with one            
another, screamed, and ran back again.                                      
  From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from        
his marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the             
progress of the action, but all these reports were false, both because      
it was impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at        
any given moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the        
actual place of conflict but reported what they had heard from others;      
and also because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to           
Napoleon circumstances changed and the news he brought was already          
becoming false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings        
that Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in      
the hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished         
the troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should         
form up on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given-      
almost as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino- the bridge        
had been retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at        
which Pierre had been present at the beginning of the battle.               
                                                   {BK10|CH33 ^paragraph 10}
  An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and                  
frightened face and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been         
repulsed, Campan wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time           
the adjutant had been told that the French had been repulsed, the           
fleches had in fact been recaptured by other French troops, and Davout      
was alive and only slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily      
untrustworthy reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either            
been executed before he gave them or could not be and were not              
executed.                                                                   
  The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle         
but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and            
only occasionally went within musket range, made their own                  
arrangements without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in         
what direction to fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry         
should run. But even their orders, like Napoleon's, were seldom             
carried out, and then but partially. For the most part things happened      
contrary to their orders. Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on           
meeting grapeshot; soldiers ordered to remain where they were,              
suddenly, seeing Russians unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed        
back and sometimes forward, and the cavalry dashed without orders in        
pursuit of the flying Russians. In this way two cavalry regiments           
galloped through the Semenovsk hollow and as soon as they reached           
the top of the incline turned round and galloped full speed back            
again. The infantry moved in the same way, sometimes running to             
quite other places than those they were ordered to go to. All orders        
as to where and when to move the guns, when to send infantry to             
shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry- all such orders        
were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the units concerned,      
without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less Napoleon.            
They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling orders or         
for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at stake          
is what is dearest to man- his own life- and it sometimes seems that        
safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and these        
men who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the         
mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward        
and backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops.           
All their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the         
harm of disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that      
flew over the fields on which these men were floundering about. As          
soon as they left the place where the balls and bullets were flying         
about, their superiors, located in the background, re-formed them           
and brought them under discipline and under the influence of that           
discipline led them back to the zone of fire, where under the               
influence of fear of death they lost their discipline and rushed about      
according to the chance promptings of the throng.                           
                                                                            
BK10|CH34                                                                   
  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!..."                     
                                                    {BK10|CH34 ^paragraph 5}
  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."                         
                                                   {BK10|CH34 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                  
                                                   {BK10|CH34 ^paragraph 15}
  "We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart.         
"Who do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom he      
subsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle").                   
  "Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew all         
the divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.                           
  Napoleon nodded assent.                                                   
  The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minutes           
later the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward.            
Napoleon gazed silently in that direction.                                  
  "No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't send Claparede. Send         
Friant's division."                                                         
                                                   {BK10|CH34 ^paragraph 20}
  Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division instead        
of Claparede's, and even in obvious inconvenience and delay in              
stopping Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried out        
exactly. Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was          
playing the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines- a role he        
so justly understood and condemned.                                         
  Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into the             
smoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive      
at a gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all        
asked for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding        
their positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the              
French army was melting away.                                               
  Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.                          
  M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since            
morning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest        
lunch to His Majesty.                                                       
  "I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he.       
                                                   {BK10|CH34 ^paragraph 25}
  Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the                
negation to refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. de           
Beausset ventured with respectful jocularity to remark that there is        
no reason for not having lunch when one can get it.                         
  "Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turned         
aside.                                                                      
  A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M.          
de Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals.                
  Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an         
ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and           
always winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances        
of the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely      
he loses.                                                                   
  His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same                 
preparations had been made, the same dispositions, and the same             
proclamation courte et energique, he himself was still the same: he         
knew that and knew that he was now even more experienced and                
skillful than before. Even the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and      
Friedland- yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally            
become impotent.                                                            
                                                   {BK10|CH34 ^paragraph 30}
  All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with                
success: the concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by          
reserves to break the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the men        
of iron," all these methods had already been employed, yet not only         
was there no victory, but from all sides came the same news of              
generals killed and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of the               
impossibility of driving back the Russians, and of disorganization          
among his own troops.                                                       
  Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a few        
phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with                  
congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the         
corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon           
and stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to         
gather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola,      
Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was          
happening to his troops.                                                    
  Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this        
was not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his          
former battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the         
men about him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked         
dejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes- only a de                
Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was happening.             
  But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning        
of a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all      
efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and            
that the least accident might now- with the fight balanced on such a        
strained center- destroy him and his army.                                  
  When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign      
in which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or           
cannon, or army corps had been captured in two months, when he              
looked at the concealed depression on the faces around him and heard        
reports of the Russians still holding their ground- a terrible feeling      
like a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents      
that might destroy him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall        
on his left wing, might break through his center, he himself might          
be killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In former          
battles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but now        
innumerable unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected them      
all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is      
coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a           
terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels          
that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of         
unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness.                     
                                                   {BK10|CH34 ^paragraph 35}
  The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the           
French army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on a           
campstool below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees.         
Berthier approached and suggested that they should ride along the line      
to ascertain the position of affairs.                                       
  "What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, tell them to bring me      
my horse."                                                                  
  He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.                                     
  Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space             
through which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools of          
blood, singly or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals         
had ever before seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small          
area. The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the      
ear and gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does        
to tableaux vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semenovsk,         
and through the smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color               
unfamiliar to him. They were Russians.                                      
  The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village and its      
knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sent          
forth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was a                  
continuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French        
or the Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the         
reverie from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what         
was going on before him and around him and was supposed to be directed      
by him and to depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair,      
for the first time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.                 
                                                   {BK10|CH34 ^paragraph 40}
  One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer to          
lead the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing near             
Napoleon, exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this                 
general's senseless offer.                                                  
  Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.                  
  "At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guard           
destroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevardino.         
                                                                            
BK10|CH35                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXV                                                              
-                                                                           
  On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning         
sat Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no      
orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested.       
  "Yes, yes, do that," he replied to various proposals. "Yes, yes: go,      
dear boy, and have a look," he would say to one or another of those         
about him; or, "No, don't, we'd better wait!" He listened to the            
reports that were brought him and gave directions when his                  
subordinates demanded that of him; but when listening to the reports        
it seemed as if he were not interested in the import of the words           
spoken, but rather in something else- in the expression of face and         
tone of voice of those who were reporting. By long years of military        
experience he knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that it          
is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands of others         
struggling with death, and he knew that the result of a battle is           
decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where      
the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of                 
slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the      
army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in      
his power.                                                                  
  Kutuzov's general expression was one of concentrated quiet                
attention, and his face wore a strained look as if he found it              
difficult to master the fatigue of his old and feeble body.                 
  At eleven o'clock they brought him news that the fleches captured by      
the French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagration was wounded.         
Kutuzov groaned and swayed his head.                                        
  "Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about it exactly,"      
he said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of             
Wurttemberg who was standing behind him.                                    
                                                    {BK10|CH35 ^paragraph 5}
  "Will Your Highness please take command of the first army?"               
  Soon after the duke's departure- before he could possibly have            
reached Semenovsk- his adjutant came back from him and told Kutuzov         
that the duke asked for more troops.                                        
  Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhturov to take over        
the command of the first army, and a request to the duke- whom he said      
he could not spare at such an important moment- to return to him. When      
they brought him news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the           
staff officers congratulated him, Kutuzov smiled.                           
  "Wait a little, gentlemen," said he. "The battle is won, and there        
is nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is              
better to wait before we rejoice."                                          
  But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the army.                  
                                                   {BK10|CH35 ^paragraph 10}
  When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank with news that         
the French had captured the fleches and the village of Semenovsk,           
Kutuzov, guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbinin's           
looks that the news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and,            
taking Scherbinin's arm, led him aside.                                     
  "Go, my dear fellow," he said to Ermolov, "and see whether something      
can't be done."                                                             
  Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian position. The        
attack directed by Napoleon against our left flank had been several         
times repulsed. In the center the French had not got beyond                 
Borodino, and on their left flank Uvarov's cavalry had put the              
French to flight.                                                           
  Toward three o'clock the French attacks ceased. On the faces of           
all who came from the field of battle, and of those who stood around        
him, Kutuzov noticed an expression of extreme tension. He was               
satisfied with the day's success- a success exceeding his                   
expectations, but the old man's strength was failing him. Several           
times his head dropped low as if it were falling and he dozed off.          
Dinner was brought him.                                                     
  Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding past Prince            
Andrew had said, "the war should be extended widely," and whom              
Bagration so detested, rode up while Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen        
had come from Barclay de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on      
the left flank. The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of            
wounded men running back and the disordered rear of the army,               
weighed all the circumstances, concluded that the battle was lost, and      
sent his favorite officer to the commander in chief with that news.         
                                                   {BK10|CH35 ^paragraph 15}
  Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and          
glanced at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened under their puckering         
lids.                                                                       
  Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached Kutuzov            
with a half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak      
of his cap.                                                                 
  He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected                   
nonchalance intended to show that, as a highly trained military man,        
he left it to Russians to make an idol of this useless old man, but         
that he knew whom he was dealing with. "Der alte Herr" (as in their         
own set the Germans called Kutuzov) "is making himself very                 
comfortable," thought Wolzogen, and looking severely at the dishes          
in front of Kutuzov he began to report to "the old gentleman" the           
position of affairs on the left flank as Barclay had ordered him to         
and as he himself had seen and understood it.                               
  "All the points of our position are in the enemy's hands and we           
cannot dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away           
and it is impossible to stop them," he reported.                            
  Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen,          
as if not understand what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing "the old      
gentleman's" agitation, said with a smile:                                  
                                                   {BK10|CH35 ^paragraph 20}
  "I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness      
what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder..."                   
  "You have seen? You have seen?..." Kutuzov shouted frowning, and          
rising quickly he went up to Wolzogen.                                      
  "How... how dare you!..." he shouted, choking and making a                
threatening gesture with his trembling arms: "How dare you, sir, say        
that to me? You know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me         
that his information is incorrect and that the real course of the           
battle is better known to me, the commander in chief, than to him."         
  Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov interrupted him.      
  "The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right        
flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say            
what you don't know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and           
inform him of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow," said         
Kutuzov sternly.                                                            
                                                   {BK10|CH35 ^paragraph 25}
  All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy                 
breathing of the panting old general.                                       
  "They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave        
army! The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the         
sacred soil of Russia," said Kutuzov crossing himself, and he suddenly      
sobbed as his eyes filled with tears.                                       
  Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped           
silently aside, marveling at "the old gentleman's" conceited                
stupidity.                                                                  
  "Ah, here he is, my hero!" said Kutuzov to a portly, handsome,            
dark-haired general who was just ascending the knoll.                       
  This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the most                 
important part of the field of Borodino.                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH35 ^paragraph 30}
  Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground         
and that the French no longer ventured to attack.                           
  After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French:                                
  "Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?"          
  "On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is              
always the most stubborn who remain victors," replied Raevski, "and in      
my opinion..."                                                              
  "Kaysarov!" Kutuzov called to his adjutant. "Sit down and write           
out the order of the day for tomorrow. And you," he continued,              
addressing another, "ride along the line and that tomorrow we attack."      
                                                   {BK10|CH35 ^paragraph 35}
  While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating the order of           
the day, Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General               
Barclay wished to have written confirmation of the order the field          
marshal had given.                                                          
  Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the             
order to be written out which the former commander in chief, to             
avoid personal responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive.          
  And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains          
throughout an army one and the same temper, known as "the spirit of         
the army," and which constitutes the sinew of war, Kutuzov's words,         
his order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end      
of the army to the other.                                                   
  It was far from being the same words or the same order that               
reached the farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth      
to mouth at different ends of the army did not even resemble what           
Kutuzov had said, but the sense of his words spread everywhere because      
what he said was not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a          
feeling that lay in the commander in chief's soul as in that of             
every Russian.                                                              
  And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and          
hearing from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted        
to believe, the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.      
                                                                            
BK10|CH36                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXVI                                                             
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew's regiment was among the reserves which till after one      
o'clock were stationed inactive behind Semenovsk, under heavy               
artillery fire. Toward two o'clock the regiment, having already lost        
more than two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled                
oatfield in the gap between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where          
thousands of men perished that day and on which an intense,                 
concentrated fire from several hundred enemy guns was directed between      
one and two o'clock.                                                        
  Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment        
here lost another third of its men. From in front and especially            
from the right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the      
mysterious domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front,           
quick hissing cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly.      
At times, as if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed        
during which the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but             
sometimes several men were torn from the regiment in a minute and           
the slain were continually being dragged away and the wounded               
carried off.                                                                
  With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those      
not yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three           
hundred paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and        
the same mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely          
heard in the ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of         
a successful shot and the cry of "stretchers!" was heard. Most of           
the time, by their officers' order, the men sat on the ground. One,         
having taken off his shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its           
lining and drew them tight again; another, rubbing some dry clay            
between his palms, polished his bayonet; another fingered the strap         
and pulled the buckle of his bandolier, while another smoothed and          
refolded his leg bands and put his boots on again. Some built little        
houses of the tufts in the plowed ground, or plaited baskets from           
the straw in the cornfield. All seemed fully absorbed in these              
pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when rows of stretchers          
went past, when some troops retreated, and when great masses of the         
enemy came into view through the smoke, no one paid any attention to        
these things. But when our artillery or cavalry advanced or some of         
our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval were heard        
on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted by occurrences      
quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was as if the        
minds of these morally exhausted men found relief in everyday,              
commonplace occurrences. A battery of artillery was passing in front        
of the regiment. The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a         
trace. "Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She'll            
fall.... Ah, they don't see it!" came identical shouts from the             
ranks all along the regiment. Another time, general attention was           
attracted by a small brown dog, coming heaven knows whence, which           
trotted in a preoccupied manner in front of the ranks with tail             
stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell close by, when it yelped,          
tucked its tail between its legs, and darted aside. Yells and               
shrieks of laughter rose from the whole regiment. But such                  
distractions lasted only a moment, and for eight hours the men had          
been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale      
and gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier.                              
  Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the regiment,             
paced up and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge      
of the meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind           
his back. There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given.        
Everything went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the              
front, the wounded carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any            
soldiers ran to the rear they returned immediately and hastily. At          
first Prince Andrew, considering it his duty to rouse the courage of        
the men and to set them an example, walked about among the ranks,           
but he soon became convinced that this was unnecessary and that             
there was nothing he could teach them. All the powers of his soul,          
as of every soldier there, were unconsciously bent on avoiding the          
contemplation of the horrors of their situation. He walked along the        
meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing at the            
dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides trying to keep to      
the footprints left on the meadow by the mowers, then he counted his        
steps, calculating how often he must walk from one strip to another to      
walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that            
grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their      
pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained of the previous             
day's thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with weary ears          
to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying          
projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the tiresomely      
familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and waited. "Here it      
comes... this one is coming our way again!" he thought, listening to        
an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. "One, another!        
Again! It has hit...." He stopped and looked at the ranks. "No, it has      
gone over. But this one has hit!" And again he started trying to reach      
the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five paces         
from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A chill      
ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many had         
been hit- a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.             
  "Adjutant!" he shouted. "Order them not to crowd together."               
                                                    {BK10|CH36 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                             
                                                   {BK10|CH36 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.         
                                                   {BK10|CH36 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                                    
                                                   {BK10|CH36 ^paragraph 20}
  "Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!" shouted an officer, seizing by      
their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly        
and jolting the stretcher.                                                  
  "Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!" said the foremost peasant.        
  "Now that's right!" said the one behind joyfully, when he had got         
into step.                                                                  
  "Your excellency! Eh, Prince!" said the trembling voice of Timokhin,      
who had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.                       
  Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from           
the stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his               
eyelids drooped.                                                            
                                                   {BK10|CH36 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to dressing station by the           
wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of        
three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch          
wood. In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were         
eating oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and           
pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among         
the birch trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than        
five acres, bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay.           
Around the wounded stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with           
dismal and attentive faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in        
vain to drive from the spot. Disregarding the officers' orders, the         
soldiers stood leaning against their stretchers and gazing intently,        
as if trying to comprehend the difficult problem of what was taking         
place before them. From the tents came now loud angry cries and now         
plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch water, or          
to point out those who were to be brought in next. The wounded men          
awaiting their turn outside the tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed,      
swore, or asked for vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andrew's             
bearers, stepping over the wounded who had not yet been bandaged, took      
him, as a regimental commander, close up to one of the tents and there      
stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew opened his eyes and           
for a long time could not make out what was going on around him. He         
remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the whirling black          
ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. Two steps from        
him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and attracting             
general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired                     
noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in        
the head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his           
talk, a crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered.                
  "We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we           
grabbed the King himself!" cried he, looking around him with eyes that      
glittered with fever. "If only reserves had come up just then, lads,        
there wouldn't have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely..."         
  Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him         
with shining eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. "But isn't it         
all the same now?" thought he. "And what will be there, and what has        
there been here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was        
something in this life I did not and do not understand."                    
                                                                            
BK10|CH37                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXVII                                                            
-                                                                           
  One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron,          
holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his           
small bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head         
and looked about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He            
evidently wanted a little respite. After turning his head from right        
to left for some time, he sighed and looked down.                           
  "All right, immediately," he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince      
Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.             
  Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.                         
  "It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have         
a chance!" remarked one.                                                    
  Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only            
just been cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince              
Andrew could not make out distinctly what was in that tent. The             
pitiful groans from all sides and the torturing pain in his thigh,          
stomach, and back distracted him. All he saw about him merged into a        
general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill      
the whole of the low tent, as a few weeks previously, on that hot           
August day, such bodies had filled the dirty pond beside the                
Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the same chair a canon, the      
sight of which had even then filled him with horror, as by a                
presentiment.                                                               
                                                    {BK10|CH37 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                    
                                                   {BK10|CH37 ^paragraph 10}
  After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a        
blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All        
the best and happiest moments of his life- especially his earliest          
childhood, when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when            
leaning over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his            
head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of life-           
returned to his memory, not merely as something past but as                 
something present.                                                          
  The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of         
whose head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him          
up and trying to quiet him.                                                 
  "Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!" his frightened moans          
could be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.                    
  Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted Andrew wanted to weep.           
Whether because he was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to      
part with life, or because of those memories of a childhood that could      
not return, or because he was suffering and others were suffering           
and that man near him was groaning so piteously- he felt like               
weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears.                          
  The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted          
blood and with the boot still on.                                           
                                                   {BK10|CH37 ^paragraph 15}
  "Oh! Oh, ooh!" he sobbed, like a woman.                                   
  The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince            
Andrew from seeing his face, moved away.                                    
  "My God! What is this? Why is he here?" said Prince Andrew to             
himself.                                                                    
  In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been          
amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men were supporting him in        
their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling,            
swollen lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully.        
"Yes, it is he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully              
connected with me," thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping         
what he saw before him. "What is the connection of that man with my         
childhood and life?" he asked himself without finding an answer. And        
suddenly a new unexpected memory from that realm of pure and loving         
childhood presented itself to him. He remembered Natasha as he had          
seen her for the first time at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck      
and arms and with a frightened happy face ready for rapture, and            
love and tenderness for her, stronger and more vivid than ever,             
awoke in his soul. He now remembered the connection that existed            
between himself and this man who was dimly gazing at him through tears      
that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered everything, and ecstatic        
pity and love for that man overflowed his happy heart.                      
  Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender            
loving tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and           
their errors.                                                               
                                                   {BK10|CH37 ^paragraph 20}
  "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!"            
                                                                            
BK10|CH38                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXVIII                                                           
-                                                                           
  The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and           
wounded, together with the heaviness of his head and the news that          
some twenty generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded,         
and the consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm,              
produced an unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to          
look at the killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his         
strength of mind. This day the horrible appearance of the                   
battlefield overcame that strength of mind which he thought                 
constituted his merit and his greatness. He rode hurriedly from the         
battlefield and returned to the Shevardino knoll, where he sat on           
his campstool, his sallow face swollen and heavy, his eyes dim, his         
nose red, and his voice hoarse, involuntarily listening, with downcast      
eyes, to the sounds of firing. With painful dejection he awaited the        
end of this action, in which he regarded himself as a participant           
and which he was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling for a          
brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm of life he           
had served so long. He felt in his own person the sufferings and death      
he had witnessed on the battlefield. The heaviness of his head and          
chest reminded him of the possibility of suffering and death for            
himself. At that moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory      
(what need had he for any more glory?). The one thing he wished for         
was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he had been on the            
Semenovsk heights the artillery commander had proposed to him to bring      
several batteries of artillery up to those heights to strengthen the        
fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo. Napoleon had      
assented and had given orders that news should be brought to him of         
the effect those batteries produced.                                        
  An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns      
had been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that          
they still held their ground.                                               
  "Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on," said      
the adjutant.                                                               
  "They want more!..." said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.                     
  "Sire?" asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.                  
                                                    {BK10|CH38 ^paragraph 5}
  "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:                                                             
-                                                                           
                                                   {BK10|CH38 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                  
                                                   {BK10|CH38 ^paragraph 15}
  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.        
-                                                                           
                                                   {BK10|CH38 ^paragraph 20}
  "Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula," he wrote further      
of the Russian war, "half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles,         
Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and         
Neapolitans. The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third            
composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine,             
Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the           
Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on:          
it included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French.         
The Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty thousand        
men; the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna to Moscow lost in           
the various battles four times more men than the French army; the           
burning of Moscow cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who         
died of cold and want in the woods; finally, in its march from              
Moscow to the Oder the Russian army also suffered from the severity of      
the season; so that by the the time it reached Vilna it numbered            
only fifty thousand, and at Kalisch less than eighteen thousand."           
-                                                                           
  He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the      
horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the          
whole responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found         
justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who        
perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.            
                                                                            
BK10|CH39                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXIX                                                             
-                                                                           
  Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and        
various uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davydov         
family and to the crown serfs- those fields and meadows where for           
hundreds of years the peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and          
Semenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At           
the dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for a      
space of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms,            
wounded and unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselves            
back to Mozhaysk from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other.      
Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their               
officers. Others held their ground and continued to fire.                   
  Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter      
of bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now            
spread a mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of                 
saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall        
on the dead and wounded, on the frightened, exhausted, and                  
hesitating men, as if to say: "Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethink        
yourselves! What are you doing?"                                            
  To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest,        
it began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to         
slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the          
question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and          
be killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want to      
do so anymore!" By evening this thought had ripened in every soul.          
At any moment these men might have been seized with horror at what          
they were doing and might have thrown up everything and run away            
anywhere.                                                                   
  But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the              
horror of what they were doing, though they would have been glad to         
leave off, some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to             
control them, and they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed,         
and applied the match, though only one artilleryman survived out of         
every three, and though they stumbled and panted with fatigue,              
perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls flew         
just as swiftly and cruelly from both sides, crushing human bodies,         
and that terrible work which was not done by the will of a man but          
at the will of Him who governs men and worlds continued.                    
  Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would         
have said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it          
would disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army          
would have said that the Russians need only make one more slight            
effort and the French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor        
the Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly        
out.                                                                        
                                                    {BK10|CH39 ^paragraph 5}
  The Russians did not make that effort because they were not               
attacking the French. At the beginning of the battle they stood             
blocking the way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the          
battle as at the beginning. But even had the aim of the Russians            
been to drive the French from their positions, they could not have          
made this last effort, for all the Russian troops had been broken           
up, there was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in the      
battle, and though still holding their positions they had lost ONE          
HALF of their army.                                                         
  The French, with the memory of all their former victories during          
fifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, with         
the consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and        
had lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guards             
intact, twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort.         
The French had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from its      
position ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians        
continued to block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French      
had not been attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain.        
But the French did not make that effort. Some historians say that           
Napoleon need only have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and           
the battle would have been won. To speak of what would have happened        
had Napoleon sent his Guards is like talking of what would happen if        
autumn became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give his            
Guards, not because he did not want to, but because it could not be         
done. All the generals, officers. and soldiers of the French army knew      
it could not be done, because the flagging spirit of the troops             
would not permitit.                                                         
  It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling      
of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and        
soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not,      
after all their experience of previous battles- when after one tenth        
of such efforts the enemy had fled- experienced a similar feeling of        
terror before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as             
threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The             
moral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not that            
sort of victory which is defined by the capture of pieces of                
material fastened to sticks, called standards, and of the ground on         
which the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral victory that      
convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent and of         
his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino. The French        
invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught received      
a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, any      
more than the Russian army, weaker by one half, could help swerving.        
By impetus gained, the French army was still able to roll forward to        
Moscow, but there, without further effort on the part of the Russians,      
it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received at         
Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was              
Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the old          
Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred         
thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at            
Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit      
had been laid.                                                              
                                                                            
BK11                                                                        
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                               BOOK ELEVEN: 1812                            
                                                                            
BK11|CH1                                                                    
  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.                                       
                                                     {BK11|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  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.      
                                                    {BK11|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                 
                                                    {BK11|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the        
oaks are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when           
the oak is budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold           
winds to blow when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the             
peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold        
wind, for the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I      
see only a coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the          
phenomena of life, and I see that however much and however carefully I      
observe the hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the            
engine, and the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells            
ringing, the engine moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I            
must entirely change my point of view and study the laws of the             
movement of steam, of the bells, and of the wind. History must do           
the same. And attempts in this direction have already been made.            
  To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject        
of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals,        
and the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are      
moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance          
in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it          
is evident that only along that path does the possibility of                
discovering the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth        
part as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by            
historians as has been devoted to describing the actions of various         
kings, commanders, and ministers and propounding the historians' own        
reflections concerning these actions.                                       
                                                                            
BK11|CH2                                                                    
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The             
Russian army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached,      
and again from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army pushed on to           
Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim,         
just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches           
the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken,           
hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles separating it from its        
goal. Every soldier in Napoleon's army felt this and the invasion           
moved on by its own momentum.                                               
  The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of         
hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army              
increased and consolidated. At Borodino a collision took place.             
Neither army was broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately      
after the collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding         
with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability        
the ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on         
for some distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its          
force.                                                                      
  The Russians retreated eighty miles- to beyond Moscow- and the            
French reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks        
after that there was not a single battle. The French did not move.          
As a bleeding, mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained      
inert in Moscow for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh            
reason, fled back: they made a dash for the Kaluga road, and (after         
a victory- for at Malo-Yaroslavets the field of conflict again              
remained theirs) without undertaking a single serious battle, they          
fled still more rapidly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond           
the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and farther still.                              
  On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov and the             
whole Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino was a         
victory. Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare      
for a fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive        
anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who      
had taken part in the battle knew it.                                       
  But all that evening and next day reports came in one after               
another of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a           
fresh battle proved physically impossible.                                  
                                                     {BK11|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  It was impossible to give battle before information had been              
collected, the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition              
replenished, the slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to               
replace those who had been killed, and before the men had had food and      
sleep. And meanwhile, the very next morning after the battle, the           
French army advanced of itself upon the Russians, carried forward by        
the force of its own momentum now seemingly increased in inverse            
proportion to the square of the distance from its aim. Kutuzov's            
wish was to attack next day, and the whole army desired to do so.           
But to make an attack the wish to do so is not sufficient, there            
must also be a possibility of doing it, and that possibility did not        
exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day's march, and then in the      
same way it was impossible not to retreat another and a third day's         
march, and at last, on the first of September when the army drew            
near Moscow- despite the strength of the feeling that had arisen in         
all ranks- the force of circumstances compelled it to retire beyond         
Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day's march, and             
abandoned Moscow to the enemy.                                              
  For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles         
are made by generals- as any one of us sitting over a map in his study      
may imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that               
battle- the questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the        
retreat not do this or that? Why did he not take up a position              
before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga           
road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think in that      
way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always          
limit the activities of any commander in chief. The activity of a           
commander in chief does not all resemble the activity we imagine to         
ourselves when we sit at case in our studies examining some campaign        
on the map, with a certain number of troops on this and that side in a      
certain known locality, and begin our plans from some given moment.         
A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event-      
the position from which we always contemplate it. The commander in          
chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so          
he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event            
that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping      
itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted               
shaping of events the commander in chief is in the midst of a most          
complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities,             
projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged      
to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly        
conflict with one another.                                                  
  Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutuzov         
should have moved his army to the Kaluga road long before reaching          
Fili, and that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But      
a commander in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always          
before him not one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these        
proposals, based on strategics and tactics, contradict each other.          
  A commander in chief's business, it would seem, is simply to              
choose one of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and        
time do not wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested        
to him to cross to the Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant               
gallops up from Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French      
or retire. An order must be given him at once, that instant. And the        
order to retreat carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road. And           
after the adjutant comes the commissary general asking where the            
stores are to be taken, and the chief of the hospitals asks where           
the wounded are to go, and a courier from Petersburg brings a letter        
from the sovereign which does not admit of the possibility of               
abandoning Moscow, and the commander in chief's rival, the man who          
is undermining him (and there are always not merely one but several         
such), presents a new project diametrically opposed to that of turning      
to the Kaluga road, and the commander in chief himself needs sleep and      
refreshment to maintain his energy and a respectable general who has        
been overlooked in the distribution of rewards comes to complain,           
and the inhabitants of the district pray to be defended, and an             
officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and gives a report quite      
contrary to what was said by the officer previously sent; and a spy, a      
prisoner, and a general who has been on reconnaissance, all describe        
the position of the enemy's army differently. People accustomed to          
misunderstand or to forget these inevitable conditions of a                 
commander in chief's actions describe to us, for instance, the              
position of the army at Fili and assume that the commander in chief         
could, on the first of September, quite freely decide whether to            
abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army less            
than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had that        
question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most palpably          
of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on the              
twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and minute of the           
retreat from Borodino to Fili.                                              
                                                                            
BK11|CH3                                                                    
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to inspect the position,        
told the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before         
Moscow and that they must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence.        
  "Give me your hand," said he and, turning it over so as to feel           
the pulse, added: "You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you         
are saying!"                                                                
  Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond          
Moscow without a battle.                                                    
  On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomilov gate of             
Moscow, Kutuzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the      
roadside. A great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count           
Rostopchin, who had come out from Moscow, joined them. This                 
brilliant company separated into several groups who all discussed           
the advantages and disadvantages of the position, the state of the          
army, the plans suggested, the situation of Moscow, and military            
questions generally. Though they had not been summoned for the              
purpose, and though it was not so called, they all felt that this           
was really a council of war. The conversations all dealt with public        
questions. If anyone gave or asked for personal news, it was done in a      
whisper and they immediately reverted to general matters. No jokes, or      
laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all these men. They               
evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the height the           
situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking among               
themselves, tried to keep near the commander in chief (whose bench          
formed the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might           
overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what was being            
said and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not          
himself take part in the conversations or express any opinion. After        
hearing what was being said by one or other of these groups he              
generally turned away with an air of disappointment, as though they         
were not speaking of anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the         
position that had been chosen, criticizing not the position itself          
so much as the mental capacity of those who had chosen it. Others           
argued that a mistake had been made earlier and that a battle should        
have been fought two days before. Others again spoke of the battle          
of Salamanca, which was described by Crosart, a newly arrived               
Frenchman in a Spanish uniform. (This Frenchman and one of the              
German princes serving with the Russian army were discussing the siege      
of Saragossa and considering the possibility of defending Moscow in         
a similar manner.) Count Rostopchin was telling a fourth group that he      
was prepared to die with the city train bands under the walls of the        
capital, but that he still could not help regretting having been            
left in ignorance of what was happening, and that had he known it           
sooner things would have been different.... A fifth group,                  
displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions, discussed         
the direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth group was          
talking absolute nonsense. Kutuzov's expression grew more and more          
preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that      
to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning of        
those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any              
senseless commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would           
result but the battle would still not take place. It would not take         
place because the commanders not merely all recognized the position to      
be impossible, but in their conversations were only discussing what         
would happen after its inevitable abandonment. How could the                
commanders lead their troops to a field of battle they considered it        
impossible to hold? The lower-grade officers and even the soldiers          
(who too reason) also considered the position impossible and therefore      
could not go to fight, fully convinced as they were of defeat. If           
Bennigsen insisted on the position being defended and others still          
discussed it, the question was no longer important in itself but            
only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue. This Kutuzov knew well.        
  Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian      
patriotism (Kutuzov could not listen to this without wincing) by            
insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as             
daylight to Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on           
Kutuzov who had brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without        
giving battle; if it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if      
battle were not given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning          
Moscow. But this intrigue did not now occupy the old man's mind. One        
terrible question absorbed him and to that question he heard no             
reply from anyone. The question for him now was: "Have I really             
allowed Napoleon to reach Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it         
decided? Can it have been yesterday when I ordered Platov to                
retreat, or was it the evening before, when I had a nap and told            
Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it earlier still?... When, when           
was this terrible affair decided? Moscow must be abandoned. The army        
must retreat and the order to do so must be given." To give that            
terrible order seemed to him equivalent to resigning the command of         
the army. And not only did he love power to which he was accustomed         
(the honours awarded to Prince Prozorovski, under whom he had served        
in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced that he was destined to        
save Russia and that that was why, against the Emperor's wish and by        
the will of the people, he had been chosen commander in chief. He           
was convinced that he alone could maintain command of the army in           
these difficult circumstances, and that in all the world he alone           
could encounter the invincible Napoleon without fear, and he was            
horrified at the thought of the order he had to issue. But something        
had to be decided, and these conversations around him which were            
assuming too free a character must be stopped.                              
                                                     {BK11|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  He called the most important generals to him.                             
  "My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself," said he, rising      
from the bench, and he rode to Fili where his carriages were waiting.       
                                                                            
BK11|CH4                                                                    
  CHAPTERIV IV                                                              
-                                                                           
  The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in           
the better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov's hut. The men,           
women, and children of the large peasant family crowded into the            
back room across the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew's six-year-old           
granddaughter whom his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had        
given a lump of sugar while drinking his tea, remained on the top of        
the brick oven in the larger room. Malasha looked down from the oven        
with shy delight at the faces, uniforms, and decorations of the             
generals, who one after another came into the room and sat down on the      
broad benches in the corner under the icons. "Granddad" himself, as         
Malasha in her own mind called Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner          
behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep in a folding armchair, and               
continually cleared his throat and pulled at the collar of his coat         
which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to pinch his neck. Those      
who entered went up one by one to the field marshal; he pressed the         
hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant Kaysarov was about to      
draw back the curtain of the window facing Kutuzov, but the latter          
moved his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood that his Serene              
Highness did not wish his face to be seen.                                  
  Round the peasant's deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils,        
and papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in           
another bench and put it beside the table. Ermolov, Kaysarov, and           
Toll, who had just arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost         
place, immediately under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high          
forehead merging into his bald crown. He had a St. George's Cross           
round his neck and looked pale and ill. He had been feverish for two        
days and was now shivering and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov, who          
with rapid gesticulations was giving him some information, speaking in      
low tones as they all did. Chubby little Dokhturov was listening            
attentively with eyebrows raised and arms folded on his stomach. On         
the other side sat Count Ostermann-Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in           
his own thoughts. His broad head with its bold features and glittering      
eyes was resting on his hand. Raevski, twitching forward the black          
hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now at Kutuzov and now        
at the door with a look of impatience. Konovnitsyn's firm, handsome,        
and kindly face was lit up by a tender, sly smile. His glance met           
Malasha's, and the expression of his eyes caused the little girl to         
smile.                                                                      
  They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of                
inspecting the position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited        
for him from four till six o'clock and did not begin their                  
deliberations all that time talked in low tones of other matters.           
  Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov leave his corner      
and draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that         
had been placed there to light up his face.                                 
  Bennigsen opened the council with the question: "Are we to abandon        
Russia's ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to        
defend it?" A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a           
frown on every face and only Kutuzov's angry grunts and occasional          
cough broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha too           
looked at "Granddad." She was nearest to him and saw how his face           
puckered; he seemed about to cry, but this did not last long.               
                                                     {BK11|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  "Russia's ancient and sacred capital!" he suddenly said, repeating        
Bennigsen's words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to        
the false note in them. "Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that        
that question has no meaning for a Russian." (He lurched his heavy          
body forward.) "Such a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The         
question I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military      
one. The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up         
Moscow without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the          
army as well as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your           
opinion," and he sank back in his chair.                                    
  The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game             
lost. Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle      
at Fili was impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the          
love of Moscow, he proposed to move troops from the right to the            
left flank during the night and attack the French right flank the           
following day. Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced           
for and against that project. Ermolov, Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed        
with Bennigsen. Whether feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice            
before abandoning the capital or guided by other, personal                  
considerations, these generals seemed not to understand that this           
council could not alter the inevitable course of events and that            
Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other generals, however,        
understood it and, leaving aside the question of Moscow, of the             
direction the army should take in its retreat. Malasha, who kept her        
eyes fixed on what was going on before her, understood the meaning          
of the council differently. It seemed to her that it was only a             
personal struggle between "Granddad" and "Long-coat" as she termed          
Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful when they spoke to one           
another, and in her heart she sided with "Granddad." In the midst of        
the conversation she noticed "Granddad" give Bennigsen a quick, subtle      
glance, and then to her joys he saw that "Granddad" said something          
to "Long-coat" which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and           
paced angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutuzov's      
calm and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen's      
proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to        
attack the French right wing.                                               
  "Gentlemen," said Kutuzov, "I cannot approve of the count's plan.         
Moving troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous,           
and military history supports that view. For instance..." Kutuzov           
seemed to reflect, searching for an example, then with a clear,             
naive look at Bennigsen he added: "Oh yes; take the battle of               
Friedland, which I think the count well remembers, and which was...         
not fully successful, only because our troops were rearranged too near      
the enemy..."                                                               
  There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them          
all.                                                                        
  The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and            
they all felt that there was no more to be said.                            
                                                    {BK11|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh as if               
preparing to speak. They all looked at him.                                 
  "Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the         
broken crockery," said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table.         
"Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with        
me. But I," he paused, "by the authority entrusted to me by my              
Sovereign and country, order a retreat."                                    
  After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and          
circumspect silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral.             
  Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different         
from the way they had spoken during the council, communicated               
something to their commander in chief.                                      
  Malasha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully         
backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its          
projections, and slipping between the legs of the generals she              
darted out of the room.                                                     
                                                    {BK11|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long time with           
his elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible               
question: "When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable?      
When was that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame           
for it?"                                                                    
  "I did not expect this," said he to his adjutant Schneider when           
the latter came in late that night. "I did not expect this! I did           
not think this would happen."                                               
  "You should take some rest, your Serene Highness," replied                
Schneider.                                                                  
  "But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!" exclaimed        
Kutuzov without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist.           
"They shall too, if only..."                                                
                                                                            
BK11|CH5                                                                    
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  At that very time, in circumstances even more important than              
retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of           
Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigator      
of that event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.        
  After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow        
was as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without          
fighting.                                                                   
  Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the        
feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.                         
  The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the          
towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without         
the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The              
people awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited      
or tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the         
strength to find what it should do at that most difficult moment.           
And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away            
abandoning their property, while the poorer remained and burned and         
destroyed what was left.                                                    
  The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was        
and is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of        
this, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in           
Russian Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already        
in July and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this.      
Those who went away, taking what they could and abandoning their            
houses and half their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism         
which expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one's children to        
save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively,      
simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces the      
most powerful results.                                                      
                                                     {BK11|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  "It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running      
away from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchin            
impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed      
to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing        
it had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that        
Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had          
committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the      
rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had         
remained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation the                   
inhabitants had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the           
charming Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian            
ladies, then liked so much.                                                 
  They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to      
whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It         
was out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst      
thing that could happen. They went away even before the battle of           
Borodino and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's calls        
to defend Moscow or the announcement of his intention to take the           
wonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or        
of the balloons that were to destroy the French, and despite all the        
nonsense Rostopchin wrote in his broadsheets. They knew that it was         
for the army to fight, and that if it could not succeed it would not        
do to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter          
of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they      
were to abandon their property to destruction. They went away               
without thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and         
wealthy city being given over to destruction, for a great city with         
wooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to be        
burned. They went away each on his own account, and yet it was only in      
consequence of their going away that the momentous event was                
accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian      
people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchin's         
orders, had already in June moved with her Negroes and her women            
jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vague                     
consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really,             
simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia.           
But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now         
had the government offices removed; now distributed quite useless           
weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the           
icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics        
of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one            
hundred and thirty-six of them removed the balloon that was being           
constructed by Leppich; now hinted that he would burn Moscow and            
related how he had set fire to his own house; now wrote a proclamation      
to the French solemnly upbraiding them for having destroyed his             
Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having hinted that he would burn        
Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch         
all spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so;      
now expelled all the French residents from Moscow, and now allowed          
Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole French colony in Moscow)      
to remain, but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to be        
arrested and exiled for no particular offense; now assembled the            
people at the Three Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid of        
them, handed over to them a man to be killed and himself drove away by      
a back gate; now declared that he would not survive the fall of             
Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his share          
in the affair- this man did not understand the meaning of what was          
happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would              
astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a      
child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event- the            
abandonment and burning of Moscow- and tried with his puny hand now to      
speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him along        
with it.                                                                    
                                                                            
BK11|CH6                                                                    
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to Petersburg,          
found herself in a difficult position.                                      
  In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee         
who occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vilna she           
had formed an intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she                
returned to Petersburg both the magnate and the prince were there, and      
both claimed their rights. Helene was faced by a new problem- how to        
preserve her intimacy with both without offending either.                   
  What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman      
did not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova, who            
evidently deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had         
she attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her           
awkward position by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by             
acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene, like a really great man           
who can do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her own position to be      
correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else         
was to blame.                                                               
  The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach            
her, she lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said           
firmly: "That's just like a man- selfish and cruel! I expected nothing      
else. A woman sacrifices herself for you, she suffers, and this is her      
reward! What right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my        
attachments and friendships? He is a man who has been more than a           
father to me!" The prince was about to say something, but Helene            
interrupted him.                                                            
  "Well, yes," said she, "it may be that he has other sentiments for        
me than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut          
my door on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with           
ingratitude! Know, monseigneur, that in all that relates to my              
intimate feelings I render account only to God and to my                    
conscience," she concluded, laying her hand on her beautiful, fully         
expanded bosom and looking up to heaven.                                    
                                                     {BK11|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  "But for heaven's sake listen to me!"                                     
  "Marry me, and I will be your slave!"                                     
  "But that's impossible."                                                  
  "You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you..." said          
Helene, beginning to cry.                                                   
  The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite distraught,      
said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying,      
that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but        
she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she         
had never been her husband's wife, and that she had been sacrificed.        
                                                    {BK11|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "But the law, religion..." said the prince, already yielding.             
  "The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can't      
arrange that?" said Helene.                                                 
  The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred          
to him, and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the               
Society of Jesus, with whom he was on intimate terms.                       
  A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Helene            
gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur        
de Jobert, a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant        
black eyes, a Jesuit a robe courte* was presented to her, and in the        
garden by the light of the illuminations and to the sound of music          
talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the         
Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true Catholic religion        
affords in this world and the next. Helene was touched, and more            
than once tears rose to her eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert         
and their voices trembled. A dance, for which her partner came to seek      
her, put an end to her discourse with her future directeur de               
conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert came to see Helene      
when she was alone, and after that often came again.                        
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK11|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  *Lay member of the Society of Jesus.                                      
-                                                                           
  One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she        
knelt down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting,           
middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself        
afterward described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze              
wafted into her soul. It was explained to her that this was la grace.       
  After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She confessed          
to him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box      
containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to          
partake of. A few days later Helene learned with pleasure that she had      
now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few days        
the Pope himself would hear of her and would send her a certain             
document.                                                                   
  All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the             
attention devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed in such        
pleasant, refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was           
now in (she wore only white dresses and white ribbons all that time)        
gave her pleasure, but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment          
to forget her aim. And as it always happens in contests of cunning          
that a stupid person gets the better of cleverer ones, Helene-              
having realized that the main object of all these words and all this        
trouble was, after converting her to Catholicism, to obtain money from      
her for Jesuit institutions (as to which she received indications)-         
before parting with her money insisted that the various operations          
necessary to free her from her husband should be performed. In her          
view the aim of every religion was merely to preserve certain               
proprieties while affording satisfaction to human desires. And with         
this aim, in one of her talks with her Father Confessor, she                
insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she bound by her      
marriage?                                                                   
                                                    {BK11|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room.        
The scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene was wearing a white      
dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe, a                
well-fed man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth,        
and white hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to Helene and,        
with a subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look of delight at           
her beauty, occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his            
opinion on the subject. Helene with an uneasy smile looked at his           
curly hair and his plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every           
moment expected the conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbe,        
though he evidently enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was                
absorbed in his mastery of the matter.                                      
  The course of the Father Confessor's arguments ran as follows:            
"Ignorant of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow        
of conjugal fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married      
state without faith in the religious significance of marriage,              
committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual                
significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this your vow was          
binding. You swerved from it. What did you commit by so acting? A           
venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial sin, for you acted without evil          
intention. If now you married again with the object of bearing              
children, your sin might be forgiven. But the question is again a           
twofold one: firstly..."                                                    
  But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with one of her          
bewitching smiles: "But I think that having espoused the true religion      
I cannot be bound by what a false religion laid upon me."                   
  The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case           
presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus' egg. He was          
delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil's progress, but           
could not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously                
constructed.                                                                
  "Let us understand one another, Countess," said he with a smile, and      
began refuting his spiritual daughter's arguments.                          
                                                                            
BK11|CH7                                                                    
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Helene understood that the question was very simple and easy from         
the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making        
difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the              
matter would be regarded by the secular authorities.                        
  So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of            
society. She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him      
what she had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so          
that the only way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her.      
The elderly magnate was at first as much taken aback by this                
suggestion of marriage with a woman whose husband was alive, as the         
younger man had been, but Helene's imperturbable conviction that it         
was as simple and natural as marrying a maiden had its effect on him        
too. Had Helene herself shown the least sign of hesitation, shame,          
or secrecy, her cause would certainly have been lost; but not only did      
she show no signs of secrecy or shame, on the contrary, with                
good-natured naivete she told her intimate friends (and these were all      
Petersburg) that both the prince and the magnate had proposed to her        
and that she loved both and was afraid of grieving either.                  
  A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Helene wanted          
to be divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would        
have opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the                   
unfortunate and interesting Helene was in doubt which of the two men        
she should marry. The question was no longer whether this was               
possible, but only which was the better match and how the matter would      
be regarded at court. There were, it is true, some rigid individuals        
unable to rise to the height of such a question, who saw in the             
project a desecration of the sacrament of marriage, but there were not      
many such and they remained silent, while the majority were interested      
in Helene's good fortune and in the question which match would be           
the more advantageous. Whether it was right or wrong to remarry             
while one had a husband living they did not discuss, for that question      
had evidently been settled by people "wiser than you or me," as they        
said, and to doubt the correctness of that decision would be to risk        
exposing one's stupidity and incapacity to live in society.                 
  Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, had come to Petersburg that            
summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express an        
opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Helene at a ball she           
stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence,            
said in her gruff voice: "So wives of living men have started marrying      
again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been         
forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all         
the brothels," and with these words Marya Dmitrievna, turning up her        
wide sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly        
round, moved across the room.                                               
  Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was regarded in         
Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only              
noticed, and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had             
used, supposing the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.          
                                                     {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he had said and         
repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his            
daughter whenever he chanced to see her:                                    
  "Helene, I have a word to say to you," and he would lead her              
aside, drawing her hand downward. "I have heard of certain projects         
concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father's      
heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much....            
But, my dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to      
say," and concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek         
against his daughter's and move away.                                       
  Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever         
man, and who was one of one of the disinterested friends so                 
brilliant a woman as Helene always has- men friends who can never           
change into lovers- once gave her his view of the matter at a small         
and intimate gathering.                                                     
  "Listen, Bilibin," said Helene (she always called friends of that         
sort by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her           
white, beringed fingers. "Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought      
to do. Which of the two?"                                                   
  Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with         
a smile on his lips.                                                        
                                                    {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "You are not taking me unawares, you know," said he. "As a true           
friend, I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see,        
if you marry the prince"- he meant the younger man- and he crooked one      
finger, "you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you         
will displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of           
connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last          
days happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be      
making a mesalliance by marrying you," and Bilibin smoothed out his         
forehead.                                                                   
  "That's a true friend!" said Helene beaming, and again touching           
Bilibin's sleeve. "But I love them, you know, and don't want to             
distress either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of          
them both."                                                                 
  Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he        
could help in that difficulty.                                              
  "Une maitresse-femme!* That's what is called putting things               
squarely. She would like to be married to all three at the same time,"      
thought he.                                                                 
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  *A masterly woman.                                                        
-                                                                           
  "But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin          
asked, his reputation being so well established that he did not fear        
to ask so naive a question. "Will he agree?"                                
  "Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that      
Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."                         
  Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.             
                                                    {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  "Even divorce you?" said he.                                              
  Helene laughed.                                                           
  Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed      
marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually        
tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned      
a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to         
the idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of           
divorce and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest          
told her that it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a            
text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly remarriage           
while the husband is alive.                                                 
  Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable,           
she drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone.      
  Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly         
and ironically.                                                             
                                                    {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  "But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is                  
divorced...'" said the old princess.                                        
  "Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rein. Dans ma      
position j'ai des devoirs,"* said Helene changing from Russian, in          
which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite            
clear, into French which suited it better.                                  
-                                                                           
  *"Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand anything.          
In my position I have obligations.                                          
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 30}
  "But, my dear...."                                                        
  "Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who      
has the right to grant dispensations..."                                    
  Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to             
announce that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.       
  "Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse          
contre lui, parce qu'il m' a manque parole."*                               
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 35}
  *"No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with him for         
not keeping his word to me."                                                
-                                                                           
  "Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde,"* said a fair-haired young           
man with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.                      
-                                                                           
  *"Countess, there is mercy for every sin."                                
                                                    {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 40}
-                                                                           
  The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who        
had entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter      
and sidled out of the room.                                                 
  "Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions        
dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how        
is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so      
simple," she thought as she got into her carriage.                          
-                                                                           
  By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and      
she wrote a letter to her husband- who, as she imagined, loved her          
very much- informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her          
having embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all         
the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to        
him by the bearer of the letter.                                            
                                                    {BK11|CH7 ^paragraph 45}
-                                                                           
  And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful        
keeping- Your friend Helene.                                                
-                                                                           
  This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field        
of Borodino.                                                                
                                                                            
BK11|CH8                                                                    
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down         
from Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully          
to Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station,        
and seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still             
entangled in the crowds of soldiers.                                        
  The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away          
quickly from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that           
day and return to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a        
room in his own bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of        
life would he be able to understand himself and all he had seen and         
felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.        
  Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along             
which he was going, still on all sides there was what there had been        
on the field of battle. There were still the same suffering,                
exhausted, and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same              
blood, the same soldiers' overcoats, the same sounds of firing              
which, though distant now, still aroused terror, and besides this           
there were the foul air and the dust.                                       
  Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat         
down by the roadside.                                                       
  Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay               
leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved      
past him in the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon        
ball was flying toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he               
shuddered and sat up. He had no idea how long he had been there. In         
the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought some                 
firewood, settled down near him and began lighting a fire.                  
                                                     {BK11|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                   
                                                    {BK11|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "Would you like a little mash?" the first soldier asked, and              
handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.                        
  Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they            
called the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than      
any food he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it,            
helping himself to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another,           
his was lit up by the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.       
  "Where have you to go to? Tell us!" said one of them.                     
  "To Mozhaysk."                                                            
  "You're a gentleman, aren't you?"                                         
                                                    {BK11|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes."                                                                    
  "And what's your name?"                                                   
  "Peter Kirilych."                                                         
  "Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we'll take you            
there."                                                                     
  In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozhaysk.        
                                                    {BK11|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep          
hill into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on          
with the soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom          
of the hill and that he had already passed it. He would not soon            
have remembered this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he           
not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to            
look for him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom            
recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat.                         
  "Your excellency!" he said. "Why, we were beginning to despair!           
How is it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?"                
  "Oh, yes!" said Pierre.                                                   
  The soldiers stopped.                                                     
  "So you've found your folk?" said one of them. "Well, good-by, Peter      
Kirilych- isn't it?"                                                        
                                                    {BK11|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  "Good-by, Peter Kirilych!" Pierre heard the other voices repeat.          
  "Good-by!" he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.              
  "I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his             
pocket. "No, better not!" said another, inner voice.                        
  There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied.        
Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all,        
lay down in his carriage.                                                   
                                                                            
BK11|CH9                                                                    
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt            
himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness          
of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of            
projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a          
feeling of horror and dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he      
opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak. All was           
tranquil in the yard. Only someone's orderly passed through the             
gateway, splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper. Above      
Pierre's head some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in        
sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof of the penthouse. The             
whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful smell of stable          
yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see the clear          
starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.                        
  "Thank God, there is no more of that!" he thought, covering up his        
head again. "Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I        
yielded to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time,          
to the end..." thought he.                                                  
  They, in Pierre's mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the      
battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before      
the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood        
out clearly and sharply from everyone else.                                 
  "To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep,      
"to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them         
what they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden        
of my outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could        
have run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been          
sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov." And the           
memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged             
Dolokhov flashed through Pierre's mind, and then he remembered his          
benefactor at Torzhok. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the         
lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English      
Club and someone near and dear to him sat at the end of the table.          
"Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor. But he died!" thought Pierre.        
"Yes, he died, and I did not know he was alive. How sorry I am that he      
died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!" On one side of the         
table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski, Denisov, and others like            
them (in his dream the category to which these men belonged was as          
clearly defined in his mind as the category of those he termed              
they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dolokhov, shouting and        
singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his benefactor      
was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words was as           
weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but            
pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor      
was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite         
distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the              
possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind,      
firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they          
were kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him.               
Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at          
that moment his legs grew cold and bare.                                    
 He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his          
cloak had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his           
cloak Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs,              
posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and                  
glittering with frost or dew.                                               
  "It is dawn," thought Pierre. "But that's not what I want. I want to      
hear and understand my benefactor's words." Again he covered himself        
up with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was         
there. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts        
that someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.               
                                                     {BK11|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                   
                                                    {BK11|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an            
officer had come with news that the French were already near                
Mozhaysk and that our men were leaving it.                                  
  Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him,          
went on foot through the town.                                              
  The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind      
them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses,        
and the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts        
that were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and             
blows could be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which         
had overtaken him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him to      
Moscow. On the way Pierre was told of the death of his                      
brother-in-law Anatole and of that of Prince Andrew.                        
                                                                            
BK11|CH10                                                                   
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the           
gates of the city he was met by Count Rostopchin's adjutant.                
  "We have been looking for you everywhere," said the adjutant. "The        
count wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at          
once on a very important matter."                                           
  Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow         
commander in chief.                                                         
  Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to town from his          
summer villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and reception room of his           
house were full of officials who had been summoned or had come for          
orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and               
explained to him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it        
would have to be surrendered. Though this news was being concealed          
from the inhabitants, the officials- the heads of the various               
government departments- knew that Moscow would soon be in the               
enemy's hands, just as Count Rostopchin himself knew it, and to escape      
personal responsibility they had all come to the governor to ask how        
they were to deal with their various departments.                           
  As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army         
came out of Rostopchin's private room.                                      
                                                    {BK11|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  "What is it?" asked Pierre.                                               
  "Oh, it's a fresh broadsheet."                                            
  Pierre took it and began reading.                                         
-                                                                           
  His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in order to join          
up with the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong              
position where the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty eight guns         
with ammunition have been sent him from here, and his Serene                
Highness says he will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is        
even ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that         
the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order, and we will      
deal with villains in our own way! When the time comes I shall want         
both town and peasant lads and will raise the cry a day or two              
beforehand, but they are not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will      
be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be        
best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow        
after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother of God to the      
wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will have some water             
blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I, too, am well now:      
one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout with both.              
                                                   {BK11|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  "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..."                                            
                                                   {BK11|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                                                                       
                                                   {BK11|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  "He? That's a tradesman, that is to say, he's the restaurant keeper,      
Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the                
proclamation."                                                              
  "Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!" said Pierre, looking at the firm,          
calm face of the old man and seeking any indication of his being a          
traitor.                                                                    
  "That's not he himself, that's the father of the fellow who wrote         
the proclamation," said the adjutant. "The young man is in prison           
and I expect it will go hard with him."                                     
  An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German            
wearing a cross round his neck, approached the speaker.                     
  "It's a complicated story, you know," said the adjutant. "That            
proclamation appeared about two months ago. The count was informed          
of it. He gave orders to investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivanovich          
here made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly        
sixty-three hands. He asked one, 'From whom did you get it?' 'From          
so-and-so.' He went to the next one. 'From whom did you get it?' and        
so on till he reached Vereshchagin, a half educated tradesman, you          
know, 'a pet of a trader,'" said the adjutant smiling. "They asked          
him, 'Who gave it you?' And the point is that we knew whom he had it        
from. He could only have had it from the Postmaster. But evidently          
they had come to some understanding. He replied: 'From no one; I            
made it up myself.' They threatened and questioned him, but he stuck        
to that: 'I made it up myself.' And so it was reported to the count,        
who sent for the man. 'From whom did you get the proclamation?' 'I          
wrote it myself.' Well, you know the count," said the adjutant              
cheerfully, with a smile of pride, "he flared up dreadfully- and            
just think of the fellow's audacity, lying, and obstinacy!"                 
                                                   {BK11|CH10 ^paragraph 30}
   "And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharev? I               
understand!" said Pierre.                                                   
  "Not at all," rejoined the adjutant in dismay. "Klyucharev had his        
own sins to answer for without that and that is why he has been             
banished. But the point is that the count was much annoyed. 'How could      
you have written it yourself?' said he, and he took up the Hamburg          
Gazette that was lying on the table. 'Here it is! You did not write it      
yourself but translated it, and translated it abominably, because           
you don't even know French, you fool.' And what do you think? 'No,'         
said he, 'I have not read any papers, I made it up myself.' 'If that's      
so, you're a traitor and I'll have you tried, and you'll be hanged!         
Say from whom you had it.' 'I have seen no papers, I made it up             
myself.' And that was the end of it. The count had the father fetched,      
but the fellow stuck to it. He was sent for trial and condemned to          
hard labor, I believe. Now the father has come to intercede for him.        
But he's a good-for-nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman's          
son, a dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures somewhere           
and imagines that the devil is no match for him. That's the sort of         
fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop here by the Stone Bridge,         
and you know there was a large icon of God Almighty painted with a          
scepter in one hand and an orb in the other. Well, he took that icon        
home with him for a few days and what did he do? He found some              
scoundrel of a painter..."                                                  
                                                                            
BK11|CH11                                                                   
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the               
commander in chief.                                                         
  When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin, puckering his          
face, was rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was      
saying something, but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went      
out.                                                                        
  "Ah, how do you do, great warrior?" said Rostopchin as soon as the        
short man had left the room. "We have heard of your prowess. But            
that's not the point. Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to         
the Masons?" he went on severely, as though there were something wrong      
about it which he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained          
silent. "I am well informed, my friend, but I am aware that there           
are Masons and Masons and I hope that you are not one of those who          
on pretense of saving mankind wish to ruin Russia."                         
  "Yes, I am a Mason," Pierre replied.                                      
  "There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs.                 
Speranski and Magnitski have been deported to their proper place.           
Mr. Klyucharev has been treated in the same way, and so have others         
who on the plea of building up the temple of Solomon have tried to          
destroy the temple of their fatherland. You can understand that             
there are reasons for this and that I could not have exiled the             
Postmaster had he not been a harmful person. It has now come to my          
knowledge that you lent him your carriage for his removal from town,        
and that you have even accepted papers from him for safe custody. I         
like you and don't wish you any harm and- as you are only half my age-      
I advise you, as a father would, to cease all communication with men        
of that stamp and to leave here as soon as possible."                       
                                                    {BK11|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  "But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?" asked Pierre.                  
  "That is for me to know, but not for you to ask," shouted                 
Rostopchin.                                                                 
  "If he is accused of circulating Napoleon's proclamation it is not        
proved that he did so," said Pierre without looking at Rostopchin,          
"and Vereshchagin..."                                                       
  "There we are!" Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder than before,          
frowning suddenly. "Vereshchagin is a renegade and a traitor who            
will be punished as he deserves," said he with the vindictive heat          
with which people speak when recalling an insult. "But I did not            
summon you to discuss my actions, but to give you advice- or an             
order if you prefer it. I beg you to leave the town and break off           
all communication with such men as Klyucharev. And I will knock the         
nonsense out of anybody"- but probably realizing that he was                
shouting at Bezukhov who so far was not guilty of anything, he              
added, taking Pierre's hand in a friendly manner, "We are on the eve        
of a public disaster and I haven't time to be polite to everybody           
who has business with me. My head is sometimes in a whirl. Well, mon        
cher, what are you doing personally?"                                       
  "Why, nothing," answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing      
the thoughtful expression of his face.                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  The count frowned.                                                        
  "A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can,          
that's all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-by,      
my dear fellow. Oh, by the by!" he shouted through the doorway after        
Pierre, "is it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches          
of the holy fathers of the Society of Jesus?"                               
  Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin's room more sullen and          
angry than he had ever before shown himself.                                
  When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight              
people had come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee,      
the colonel of his battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various      
petitioners. They all had business with Pierre and wanted decisions         
from him. Pierre did not understand and was not interested in any of        
these questions and only answered them in order to get rid of these         
people. When left alone at last he opened and read his wife's letter.       
  "They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old      
man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary...           
the meaning of all... one must harness... my wife is getting                
married... One must forget and understand..." And going to his bed          
he threw himself on it without undressing and immediately fell asleep.      
                                                   {BK11|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that         
a special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count                  
Rostopchin to know whether Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving           
the town.                                                                   
  A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in         
the drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to         
see them, went to the back porch and out through the gate.                  
  From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of        
Bezukhov's household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre          
again or knew where he was.                                                 
                                                                            
BK11|CH12                                                                   
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is,      
till the eve of the enemy's entry into the city.                            
  After Petya had joined Obolenski's regiment of Cossacks and left for      
Belaya Tserkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was            
seized with terror. The thought that both her sons were at the war,         
had both gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or         
both of them might be killed like the three sons of one of her              
acquaintances, struck her that summer for the first time with cruel         
clearness. She tried to get Nicholas back and wished to go herself          
to join Petya, or to get him an appointment somewhere in Petersburg,        
but neither of these proved possible. Petya could not return unless         
his regiment did so or unless he was transferred to another regiment        
on active service. Nicholas was somewhere with the army and had not         
sent a word since his last letter, in which he had given a detailed         
account of his meeting with Princess Mary. The countess did not             
sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep dreamed that she saw her        
sons lying dead. After many consultations and conversations, the count      
at last devised means to tranquillize her. He got Petya transferred         
from Obolenski's regiment to Bezukhov's, which was in training near         
Moscow. Though Petya would remain in the service, this transfer             
would give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one of           
her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her           
Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to        
places where he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as        
Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved           
her first-born more than all her other children and even reproached         
herself for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad      
at lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself      
a nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his merry black         
eyes and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show-      
when he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were             
fighting somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure          
in it- then his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all      
her other children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return,           
the more uneasy grew the countess. She began to think she would             
never live to see such happiness. The presence of Sonya, of her             
beloved Natasha, or even of her husband irritated her. "What do I want      
with them? I want no one but Petya," she thought.                           
  At the end of August the Rostovs received another letter from             
Nicholas. He wrote from the province of Voronezh where he had been          
sent to procure remounts, but that letter did not set the countess          
at ease. Knowing that one son was out of danger she became the more         
anxious about Petya.                                                        
  Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostovs'                 
acquaintances had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to                
persuade the countess to get away as quickly as possible, she would         
not bear of leaving before her treasure, her adored Petya, returned.        
On the twenty-eighth of August he arrived. The passionate tenderness        
with which his mother received him did not please the sixteen-year-old      
officer. Though she concealed from him her intention of keeping him         
under her wing, Petya guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing        
that he might give way to emotion when with her- might "become              
womanish" as he termed it to himself- he treated her coldly, avoided        
her, and during his stay in Moscow attached himself exclusively to          
Natasha for whom he had always had a particularly brotherly                 
tenderness, almost lover-like.                                              
  Owing to the count's customary carelessness nothing was ready for         
their departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were      
to come from their Ryazan and Moscow estates to remove their household      
belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth.                               
                                                    {BK11|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a          
bustle and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodino        
were brought in by the Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts          
of Moscow, and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their        
possessions out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin's                
broadsheets, or because of them or independently of them, the               
strangest and most contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some      
said that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on the         
contrary said that all the icons had been taken out of the churches         
and everybody was to be ordered to leave. Some said there had been          
another battle after Borodino at which the French had been routed,          
while others on the contrary reported that the Russian army bad been        
destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia which, preceded by the      
clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others whispered that Augustin         
had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had been seized, that the        
peasants were rioting and robbing people on their way from Moscow, and      
so on. But all this was only talk; in reality (though the Council of        
Fili, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow, had not yet been           
held) both those who went away and those who remained behind felt,          
though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be abandoned,      
and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and save             
their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break          
up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so.        
As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die          
immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is        
awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life,        
though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the           
conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would      
be completely upset.                                                        
  During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole        
Rostov family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the           
family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting      
the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty            
orders at home about the preparations for their departure.                  
  The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied            
with everything, was constantly in pursuit of Petya who was always          
running away from her, and was jealous of Natasha with whom he spent        
all his time. Sonya alone directed the practical side of matters by         
getting things packed. But of late Sonya had been particularly sad and      
silent. Nicholas' letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had            
elicited, in her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who           
saw an intervention of Providence in this meeting of the princess           
and Nicholas.                                                               
  "I was never pleased at Bolkonski's engagement to Natasha," said the      
countess, "but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had      
a presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!"        
  Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of               
retrieving the Rostovs' affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman,      
and that the princess was a good match. It was very bitter for her.         
But despite her grief, or perhaps just because of it, she took on           
herself all the difficult work of directing the storing and packing of      
their things and was busy for whole days. The count and countess            
turned to her when they had any orders to give. Petya and Natasha on        
the contrary, far from helping their parents, were generally a              
nuisance and a hindrance to everyone. Almost all day long the house         
resounded with their running feet, their cries, and their                   
spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were gay not because there           
was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and mirth were in their         
hearts and so everything that happened was a cause for gaiety and           
laughter to them. Petya was in high spirits because having left home a      
boy he had returned (as everybody told him) a fine young man,               
because he was at home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov where there      
was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come to Moscow          
where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly because           
Natasha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natasha        
was gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her      
of the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was      
also happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of           
others was a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed to make them        
run freely- and Petya adored her. Above all, they were gay because          
there was a war near Moscow, there would be fighting at the town            
gates, arms were being given out, everybody was escaping- going away        
somewhere, and in general something extraordinary was happening, and        
that is always exciting, especially to the young.                           
                                                                            
BK11|CH13                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the                
Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the         
furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and         
pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay,      
wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house      
serfs carrying out the things were treading heavily on the parquet          
floors. The yard was crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high           
and already corded up, others still empty.                                  
  The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants         
who had come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another        
in the yard and in the house. The count bad been out since morning.         
The countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil         
and was lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress          
on her head. Petya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend with      
whom he meant to obtain a transfer from the militia to the active           
army. Sonya was in the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass      
and china. Natasha was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room          
with dresses, ribbons, and scarves strewn all about her, gazing             
fixedly at the floor and holding in her hands the old ball dress            
(already out of fashion) which she had worn at her first Petersburg         
ball.                                                                       
  Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy,      
and several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart      
was not in it, and she could not and did not know how to do anything        
except with all her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood      
beside Sonya while the china was being packed and tried to help, but        
soon gave it up and went to her room to pack her own things. At             
first she found it amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to the          
maids, but when that was done and what was left had still to be             
packed, she found it dull.                                                  
  "Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won't you, dear?" And when Dunyasha        
willingly promised to do it all for her, Natasha sat down on the            
floor, took her old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite               
unrelated to what ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was          
roused from her reverie by the talk of the maids in the next room           
(which was theirs) and by the sound of their hurried footsteps going        
to the back porch. Natasha got up and looked out of the window. An          
enormously long row of carts full of wounded men had stopped in the         
street.                                                                     
  The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen,      
postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded.        
                                                    {BK11|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and           
holding an end of it in each hand, went out into the street.                
  The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had stepped out of         
the crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of         
bast mats, and was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside.         
Natasha moved a few steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her      
handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was saying.              
  "Then you have nobody in Moscow?" she was saying. "You would be more      
comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the            
family are leaving."                                                        
  "I don't know if it would be allowed," replied the officer in a weak      
voice. "Here is our commanding officer... ask him," and he pointed          
to a stout major who was walking back along the street past the row of      
carts.                                                                      
  Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded           
officer and at once went to meet the major.                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  "May the wounded men stay in our house?" she asked.                       
  The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.                        
  "Which one do you want, Ma'am'selle?" said he, screwing up his            
eyes and smiling.                                                           
  Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole manner      
were so serious, though she was still holding the ends of her               
handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some reflection-      
as if considering in how far the thing was possible- replied in the         
affirmative.                                                                
  "Oh yes, why not? They may," he said.                                     
                                                   {BK11|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped back               
quickly to Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking compassionately to the      
officer.                                                                    
  "They may. He says they may!" whispered Natasha.                          
  The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostovs' yard,      
and dozens of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the         
townsfolk to turn into the yards and to draw up at the entrances of         
the houses in Povarskaya Street. Natasha was evidently pleased to be        
dealing with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life.           
She and Mavra Kuzminichna tried to get as many of the wounded as            
possible into their yard.                                                   
  "Your Papa must be told, though," said Mavra Kuzminichna.                 
  "Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can          
move into the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house."       
                                                   {BK11|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if        
we put them into the wing, the men's room, or the nurse's room, we          
must ask permission."                                                       
  "Well, I'll ask."                                                         
  Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the                 
half-open door into the sitting room, where there was a smell of            
vinegar and Hoffman's drops.                                                
  "Are you asleep, Mamma?"                                                  
  "Oh, what sleep-?" said the countess, waking up just as she was           
dropping into a doze.                                                       
                                                   {BK11|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  "Mamma darling!" said Natasha, kneeling by her mother and bringing        
her face close to her mother's, "I am sorry, forgive me, I'll never do      
it again; I woke you up! Mavra Kuzminichna has sent me: they have           
brought some wounded here- officers. Will you let them come? They have      
nowhere to go. I knew you'd let them come!" she said quickly all in         
one breath.                                                                 
  "What officers? Whom have they brought? I don't understand                
anything about it," said the countess.                                      
  Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.                    
  "I knew you'd give permission... so I'll tell them," and, having          
kissed her mother, Natasha got up and went to the door.                     
  In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news.           
                                                   {BK11|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  "We've stayed too long!" said the count with involuntary vexation.        
"The Club is closed and the police are leaving."                            
  "Papa, is it all right- I've invited some of the wounded into the         
house?" said Natasha.                                                       
  "Of course it is," he answered absently. "That's not the point. I         
beg you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and             
tomorrow we must go, go, go!...."                                           
  And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the              
servants.                                                                   
  At dinner Petya having returned home told them the news he had            
heard. He said the people had been getting arms in the Kremlin, and         
that though Rostopchin's broadsheet had said that he would sound a          
call two or three days in advance, the order had certainly already          
been given for everyone to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and        
that there would be a big battle there.                                     
                                                   {BK11|CH13 ^paragraph 35}
  The countess looked with timid horror at her son's eager, excited         
face as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his        
not going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed the thought of the             
impending engagement) he would say something about men, honor, and the      
fatherland- something senseless, masculine, and obstinate which             
there would be no contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and        
so, hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Petya with her          
as their protector and defender, she did not answer him, but after          
dinner called the count aside and implored him with tears to take           
her away quickly, that very night if possible. With a woman's               
involuntary loving cunning she, who till then had not shown any alarm,      
said that she would die of fright if they did not leave that very           
night. Without any pretense she was now afraid of everything.               
                                                                            
BK11|CH14                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the      
countess' fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit         
dealer's in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had        
been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the      
shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the          
cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the barrels          
at the drink store, having received orders to do so.                        
  After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work with                  
enthusiastic haste packing their belongings and preparing for their         
departure. The old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing            
from the yard to the house and back again, shouting confused                
instructions to the hurrying people, and flurrying them still more.         
Petya directed things in the yard. Sonya, owing to the count's              
contradictory orders, lost her head and did not know what to do. The        
servants ran noisily about the house and yard, shouting and disputing.      
Natasha, with the ardor characteristic of all she did suddenly set          
to work too. At first her intervention in the business of packing           
was received skeptically. Everybody expected some prank from her and        
did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely and passionately demanded      
obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because they did not heed            
her, and at last succeeded in making them believe her. Her first            
exploit, which cost her immense effort and established her                  
authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable           
Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When Natasha           
set to work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one almost        
full up with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much          
china standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from      
the storeroom. A third case was needed and servants had gone to             
fetch it.                                                                   
  "Sonya, wait a bit- we'll pack everything into these," said Natasha.      
  "You can't, Miss, we have tried to," said the butler's assistant.         
  "No, wait a minute, please."                                              
                                                    {BK11|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates        
wrapped in paper.                                                           
  "The dishes must go in here among the carpets," said she.                 
  "Why, it's a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three             
cases," said the butler's assistant.                                        
  "Oh, wait, please!" And Natasha began rapidly and deftly sorting out      
the things. "These aren't needed," said she, putting aside some plates      
of Kiev ware. "These- yes, these must go among the carpets," she said,      
referring to the Saxony china dishes.                                       
  "Don't, Natasha! Leave it alone! We'll get it all packed," urged          
Sonya reproachfully.                                                        
                                                   {BK11|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  "What a young lady she is!" remarked the major-domo.                      
  But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything out and began        
quickly repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and           
unnecessary crockery should not be taken at all. When everything had        
been taken out of the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned        
out that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all            
been rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the two cases.      
Only the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down. A      
few more things might have been taken out, but Natasha insisted on          
having her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler's        
assistant and Petya- whom she had drawn into the business of                
packing- press on the lid, and made desperate efforts herself.              
  "That's enough, Natasha," said Sonya. "I see you were right, but          
just take out the top one."                                                 
  "I won't!" cried Natasha, with one hand bolding back the hair that        
hung over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down        
the carpets. "Now press, Petya! Press, Vasilich, press hard!" she           
cried.                                                                      
  The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha, clapping her hands,      
screamed with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only           
lasted a moment. She at once set to work afresh and they now trusted        
her completely. The count was not angry even when they told him that        
Natasha had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now came        
to her to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded, and whether it        
might be corded up. Thanks to Natasha's directions the work now went        
on expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most                
valuable packed as compactly as possible.                                   
                                                   {BK11|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could        
not get everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the           
count, having put off their departure till next morning, went to bed.       
  Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without undressing.           
  That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskaya, and        
Mavra Kuzminichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought            
into the Rostovs' yard. Mavra Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very      
important man. He was being conveyed in a caleche with a raised             
hood, and was quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the              
driver sat a venerable old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers             
followed the carriage in a cart.                                            
  "Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house      
will be empty," said the old woman to the old attendant.                    
  "Well, perhaps," said he with a sigh. "We don't expect to get him         
home alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it's a long           
way from here, and there's nobody living in it."                            
                                                   {BK11|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  "Do us the honor to come in, there's plenty of everything in the          
master's house. Come in," said Mavra Kuzminichna. "Is he very ill?"         
she asked.                                                                  
  The attendant made a hopeless gesture.                                    
  "We don't expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor."                
  And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.        
  "All right!" said the doctor.                                             
                                                   {BK11|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it, shook his        
head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and             
stopped beside Mavra Kuzminichna.                                           
  "O, Lord Jesus Christ!" she murmured.                                     
  She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.                  
  "The masters won't object..." she said.                                   
  But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took         
him into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame              
Schoss'.                                                                    
                                                   {BK11|CH14 ^paragraph 30}
  This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski.                             
                                                                            
BK11|CH15                                                                   
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Moscow's last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a           
Sunday. The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just          
as usual on Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the          
city.                                                                       
  Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow- the             
rabble, that is the poor people, and the price of commodities. An           
enormous crowd of factory hands, house serfs, and peasants, with            
whom some officials, seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone         
early that morning to the Three Hills. Having waited there for              
Rostopchin who did not turn up, they became convinced that Moscow           
would be surrendered, and then dispersed all about the town to the          
public houses and cookshops. Prices too that day indicated the state        
of affairs. The price of weapons, of gold, of carts and horses, kept        
rising, but the value of paper money and city articles kept falling,        
so that by midday there were instances of carters removing valuable         
goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment a half of what they          
carted, while peasant horses were fetching five hundred rubles each,        
and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being given away for nothing.      
  In the Rostovs' staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of              
former conditions of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs        
the only indication was that three out of their huge retinue                
disappeared during the night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the         
value of their possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come          
in from their estates and which many people envied proved to be             
extremely valuable and they were offered enormous sums of money for         
them. Not only were huge sums offered for the horses and carts, but on      
the previous evening and early in the morning of the first of               
September, orderlies and servants sent by wounded officers came to the      
Rostovs' and wounded men dragged themselves there from the Rostovs'         
and from neighboring houses where they were accommodated, entreating        
the servants to try to get them a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo        
to whom these entreaties were addressed, though he was sorry for the        
wounded, resolutely refused, saying that he dare not even mention           
the matter to the count. Pity these wounded men as one might, it was        
evident that if they were given one cart there would be no reason to        
refuse another, or all the carts and one's own carriages as well.           
Thirty carts could not save all the wounded and in the general              
catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one's own family. So        
thought the major-domo on his master's behalf.                              
  On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his bedroom softly,      
so as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward            
morning, and came out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In      
the yard stood the carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front      
porch. The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly      
and to a pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing the count        
the major-domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go      
away.                                                                       
  "Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?" asked the count, and stroking      
his bald head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the               
orderly and nodded to them. (He liked to see new faces.)                    
                                                    {BK11|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                                            
                                                   {BK11|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  "Oh, yes, yes,yes!" said the count hastily. "I shall be very              
pleased, very pleased. Vasilich, you'll see to it. Just unload one          
or two carts. Well, what of it... do what's necessary..." said the          
count, muttering some indefinite order.                                     
  But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the             
officer's face had already sealed the order. The count looked around        
him. In the yard, at the gates, at the window of the wings, wounded         
officers and their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at      
the count and moving toward the porch.                                      
  "Please step into the gallery, your excellency," said the                 
major-domo. "What are your orders about the pictures?"                      
  The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to        
refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.                                    
  "Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded," he added          
in a soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard.         
                                                   {BK11|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  At nine o'clock the countess woke up, and Matrena Timofeevna, who         
had been her lady's maid before her marriage and now performed a            
sort of chief gendarme's duty for her, came to say that Madame              
Schoss was much offended and the young ladies' summer dresses could         
not be left behind. On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame            
Schoss was offended because her trunk had been taken down from its          
cart, and all the loads were being uncorded and the luggage taken           
out of the carts to make room for wounded men whom the count in the         
simplicity of his heart had ordered that they should take with them.        
The countess sent for her husband.                                          
  "What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded."       
  "You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer      
came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are      
things that can be bought but think what being left behind means to         
them!... Really now, in our own yard- we asked them in ourselves and        
there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let         
them be taken... where's the hurry?"                                        
  The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money           
matters. The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of         
news of something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the      
building of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a            
private theater or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose        
anything announced in that timid tone and considered it her duty to do      
so.                                                                         
  She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband:      
"Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are               
getting nothing for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our-      
all the children's property! You said yourself that we have a               
hundred thousand rubles' worth of things in the house. I don't              
consent, my dear, I don't! Do as you please! It's the government's          
business to look after the wounded; they know that. Look at the             
Lopukhins opposite, they cleared out everything two days ago. That's        
what other people do. It's only we who are such fools. If you have          
no pity on me, have some for the children."                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without           
replying.                                                                   
  "Papa, what are you doing that for?" asked Natasha, who had followed      
him into her mother's room.                                                 
  "Nothing! What business is it of yours?" muttered the count angrily.      
  "But I heard," said Natasha. "Why does Mamma object?"                     
  "What business is it of yours?" cried the count.                          
                                                   {BK11|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered.                            
  "Papa! Here's Berg coming to see us," said she, looking out of the        
window.                                                                     
                                                                            
BK11|CH16                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Berg, the Rostovs' son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the          
orders of Vladimir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and              
agreeable post of assistant to the head of the staff of the                 
assistant commander of the first division of the Second Army.               
  On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army.            
  He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone          
in the army was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something          
to do there. So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence      
for family and domestic reasons.                                            
  Berg drove up to his father-in-law's house in his spruce little trap      
with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He      
looked attentively at the carts in the yard and while going up to           
the porch took out a clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it.       
  From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into        
the drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of          
Natasha and Sonya, and hastened to inquire after "Mamma's" health.          
                                                    {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "Health, at a time like this?" said the count. "Come, tell us the         
news! Is the army retreating or will there be another battle?"              
  "God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa,"         
said Berg. "The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the            
leaders, so to say, have now assembled in council. No one knows what        
is coming. But in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic          
spirit, the truly antique valor of the Russian army, which they- which      
it" (he corrected himself) "has shown or displayed in the battle of         
the twenty-sixth- there are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell        
you, Papa" (he smote himself on the breast as a general he had heard        
speaking had done, but Berg did it a trifle late for he should have         
struck his breast at the words "Russian army"), "I tell you frankly         
that we, the commanders, far from having to urge the men on or              
anything of that kind, could hardly restrain those... those... yes,         
those exploits of antique valor," he went on rapidly. "General Barclay      
de Tolly risked his life everywhere at the head of the troops, I can        
assure you. Our corps was stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!"        
  And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he           
had heard those days. Natasha watched him with an intent gaze that          
confused him, as if she were trying to find in his face the answer          
to some question.                                                           
  "Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors         
cannot be imagined or adequately praised!" said Berg, glancing round        
at Natasha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her            
intent look with a smile. "'Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in           
the hearts of her sons!' Isn't it so, Papa?" said he.                       
  Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary         
and dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her           
hand, asked about her health, and, swaying his head from side to            
side to express sympathy, remained standing beside her.                     
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad             
times for every Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still         
time to get away...."                                                       
  "I can't think what the servants are about," said the countess,           
turning to her husband. "I have just been told that nothing is ready        
yet. Somebody after all must see to things. One misses Mitenka at such      
times. There won't be any end to it."                                       
  The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained            
himself. He got up from his chair and went to the door.                     
  At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose      
and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and            
significantly.                                                              
  "And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa," said he.                  
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  "Hm..." said the count, and stopped.                                      
  "I was driving past Yusupov's house just now," said Berg with a           
laugh, "when the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I      
wouldn't buy something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and           
there is a small chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear         
Vera wanted a chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute about it."      
(At the mention of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg                   
involuntarily changed his tone to one of pleasure at his admirable          
domestic arrangements.) "And it's such a beauty! It pulls out and           
has a secret English drawer, you know! And dear Vera has long wanted        
one. I wish to give her a surprise, you see. I saw so many of those         
peasant carts in your yard. Please let me have one, I will pay the man      
well, and..."                                                               
  The count frowned and coughed.                                            
  "Ask the countess, I don't give orders."                                  
  "If it's inconvenient, please don't," said Berg. "Only I so wanted        
it, for dear Vera's sake."                                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the            
devil..." cried the old count. "My head's in a whirl!"                      
  And he left the room. The countess began to cry.                          
  "Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!" said Berg.                  
  Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it               
difficult to reach some decision, first followed him and then ran           
downstairs.                                                                 
  Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the              
servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still              
standing in the yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded           
officer was climbing into one of them helped by an orderly.                 
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  "Do you know what it's about?" Petya asked Natasha.                       
  She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling           
about. She did not answer.                                                  
  "It's because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the                 
wounded," said Petya. "Vasilich told me. I consider..."                     
  "I consider," Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry          
face to Petya, "I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I             
don't know what. Are we despicable Germans?"                                
  Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening         
and letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed      
headlong up the stairs.                                                     
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 30}
  Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the               
respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was            
pacing up and down the room, when Natasha, her face distorted by            
anger, burst in like a tempest and approached her mother with rapid         
steps.                                                                      
  "It's horrid! It's abominable! she screamed. "You can't possibly          
have ordered it!"                                                           
  Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The        
count stood still at the window and listened.                               
  "Mamma, it's impossible: see what is going on in the yard!" she           
cried. "They will be left!..."                                              
  "What's the matter with you? Who are 'they'? What do you want?"           
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 35}
  "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!"                                             
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 40}
  But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her              
husband.                                                                    
  "My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don't understand         
about it," said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.                        
  "The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen," muttered the count           
through tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide         
her look of shame on his breast.                                            
  "Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?..." asked Natasha. "We will         
still take all the most necessary things."                                  
  The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at         
which she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to      
the anteroom and downstairs into the yard.                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 45}
  The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the            
strange order she brought them until the count himself, in his              
wife's name, confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the            
wounded and take the trunks to the storerooms. When they understood         
that order the servants set to work at this new task with pleasure and      
zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it            
seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour      
before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should          
be left behind and the goods carted away but that had seemed the            
only thing to do.                                                           
  The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner,        
set eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the           
carts. The wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood          
with pale but happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to      
be had spread to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men             
began to come into the Rostovs' yard. Many of the wounded asked them        
not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the top of the          
things. But the work of unloading, once started, could not be               
arrested. It seemed not to matter whether all or only half the              
things were left behind. Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures, and        
mirrors that had been so carefully packed the night before now lay          
about the yard, and still they went on searching for and finding            
possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded have        
another and yet another cart.                                               
  "We can take four more men," said the steward. "They can have my          
trap, or else what is to become of them?"                                   
  "Let them have my wardrobe cart," said the countess. "Dunyasha can        
go with me in the carriage."                                                
  They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from      
a house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was          
bright and animated. Natasha was in a state of rapturous excitement         
such as she had not known for a long time.                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 50}
  "What could we fasten this onto?" asked the servants, trying to           
fix a trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. "We must keep        
at least one cart."                                                         
  "What's in it?" asked Natasha.                                            
  "The count's books."                                                      
  "Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It's not wanted."                   
  The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where          
Count Peter could sit.                                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH16 ^paragraph 55}
  "On the box. You'll sit on the box, won't you, Petya?" cried              
Natasha.                                                                    
  Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was          
quite different from Natasha's. She was putting away the things that        
had to be left behind and making a list of them as the countess             
wished, and she tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.      
                                                                            
BK11|CH17                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Before two o'clock in the afternoon the Rostovs' four carriages,          
packed full and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door.         
One by one the carts with the wounded had moved out of the yard.            
  The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sonya's      
attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she         
was arranging a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that           
stood at the entrance.                                                      
  "Whose caleche is that?" she inquired, leaning out of the carriage        
window.                                                                     
  "Why, didn't you know, Miss?" replied the maid. "The wounded prince:      
he spent the night in our house and is going with us."                      
  "But who is it? What's his name?"                                         
                                                    {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  "It's our intended that was- Prince Bolkonski himself! They say he        
is dying," replied the maid with a sigh.                                    
  Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess,      
tired out and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey, was      
pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to           
assemble for the usual silent prayer with closed doors before               
starting. Natasha was not in the room.                                      
  "Mamma," said Sonya, "Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is      
going with us."                                                             
  The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sonya's arm,          
glanced around.                                                             
  "Natasha?" she murmured.                                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them.      
They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what would happen if she           
heard this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.           
  "Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us," said Sonya.         
  "You say he is dying?"                                                    
  Sonya nodded.                                                             
  The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to cry.                  
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  "The ways of God are past finding out!" she thought, feeling that         
the Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all            
that was now taking place.                                                  
  "Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What's the matter?" asked              
Natasha, as with animated face she ran into the room.                       
  "Nothing," answered the countess. "If everything is ready let us          
start."                                                                     
  And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face.        
Sonya embraced Natasha and kissed her.                                      
  Natasha looked at her inquiringly.                                        
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 20}
  "What is it? What has happened?"                                          
  "Nothing... No..."                                                        
  "Is it something very bad for me? What is it?" persisted Natasha          
with her quick intuition.                                                   
  Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya, Madame Schoss,          
Mavra Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came into the drawing room and, having      
closed the doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments           
silently seated without looking at one another.                             
  The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed             
himself before the icon. All the others did the same. Then the count        
embraced Mavra Kuzminichna and Vasilich, who were to remain in Moscow,      
and while they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted         
their backs lightly with some vaguely affectionate and comforting           
words. The countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on      
her knees before the icons that had been left here and there hanging        
on the wall. (The most precious ones, with which some family tradition      
was connected, were being taken with them.)                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 25}
  In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had armed with            
swords and daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and        
with belts and girdles tightened, were taking leave of those remaining      
behind.                                                                     
  As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put      
in the wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on        
each side of the open door and the carriage steps waiting to help           
the countess in, while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the      
house to the carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back again.           
  "They always will forget everything!" said the countess. "Don't           
you know I can't sit like that?"                                            
  And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an           
aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange         
the seat.                                                                   
  "Oh, those servants!" said the count, swaying his head.                   
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 30}
  Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to      
drive her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as            
glance round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years'            
experience he knew it would be some time yet before the order, "Be          
off, in God's name!" would be given him: and he knew that even when it      
was said he would be stopped once or twice more while they sent back        
to fetch something that had been forgotten, and even after that he          
would again be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of           
the window and beg him for the love of heaven to drive carefully            
down the hill. He knew all this and therefore waited calmly for what        
would happen, with more patience than the horses, especially the            
near one, the chestnut Falcon, who was pawing the ground and                
champing his bit. At last all were seated, the carriage steps were          
folded and pulled up, the door was shut, somebody was sent for a            
traveling case, and the countess leaned out and said what she had to        
say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and began crossing himself.      
The postilion and all the other servants did the same. "Off, in             
God's name!" said Efim, putting on his hat. "Start!" The postilion          
started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his collar, the            
high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman         
sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed           
out of the yard onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted          
in their turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In      
the carriages, the caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as      
they passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to remain in      
Moscow walked on either side of the vehicles seeing the travelers off.      
  Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting        
in the carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly                
receding walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned        
out of the carriage window and looked back and then forward at the          
long train of wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of the line      
she could see the raised hood of Prince Andrew's caleche. She did           
not know who was in it, but each time she looked at the procession her      
eyes sought that caleche. She knew it was right in front.                   
  In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and Podnovinsk Streets            
came several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostovs', and          
as they passed along the Sadovaya Street the carriages and carts            
formed two rows abreast.                                                    
  As they were going round the Sukharev water tower Natasha, who was        
inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking        
past, suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:                                
  "Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it's he!"                                   
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 35}
  "Who? Who?"                                                               
  "Look! Yes, on my word, it's Bezukhov!" said Natasha, putting her         
head out of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a              
coachman's long coat, who from his manner of walking and moving was         
evidently a gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the            
arch of the Sukharev tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced,            
beardless old man in a frieze coat.                                         
  "Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman's coat, with a                  
queer-looking old boy. Really," said Natasha, "look, look!"                 
  "No, it's not he. How can you talk such nonsense?"                        
  "Mamma," screamed Natasha, "I'll stake my head it's he! I assure          
you! Stop, stop!" she cried to the coachman.                                
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 40}
  But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchanski Street          
came more carts and carriages, and the Rostovs were being shouted at        
to move on and not block the way.                                           
  In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the            
Rostovs all saw Pierre- or someone extraordinarily like him- in a           
coachman's coat, going down the street with head bent and a serious         
face beside a small, beardless old man who looked like a footman. That      
old man noticed a face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at          
them, and respectfully touching Pierre's elbow said something to him        
and pointed to the carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in thought,        
could not at first understand him. At length when he had understood         
and looked in the direction the old man indicated, he recognized            
Natasha, and following his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly      
toward the coach. But having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember      
something and stopped.                                                      
  Natasha's face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical          
kindliness.                                                                 
  "Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is             
wonderful!" she cried, holding out her hand to him. "What are you           
doing? Why are you like this?"                                              
  Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he           
walked along beside her while the coach still moved on.                     
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 45}
  "What is the matter, Count?" asked the countess in a surprised and        
commiserating tone.                                                         
  "What? What? Why? Don't ask me," said Pierre, and looked round at         
Natasha whose radiant, happy expression- of which he was conscious          
without looking at her- filled him with enchantment.                        
  "Are you remaining in Moscow, then?"                                      
  Pierre hesitated.                                                         
  "In Moscow?" he said in a questioning tone. "Yes, in Moscow.              
Goodby!"                                                                    
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 50}
  "Ah, if only I were a man? I'd certainly stay with you. How               
splendid!" said Natasha. "Mamma, if you'll let me, I'll stay!"              
  Pierre glanced absently at Natasha and was about to say something,        
but the countess interrupted him.                                           
  "You were at the battle, we heard."                                       
  "Yes, I was," Pierre answered. "There will be another battle              
tomorrow..." he began, but Natasha interrupted him.                         
  "But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like                 
yourself...."                                                               
                                                   {BK11|CH17 ^paragraph 55}
  "Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me! I don't know myself. Tomorrow...         
But no! Good-by, good-by!" he muttered. "It's an awful time!" and           
dropping behind the carriage he stepped onto the pavement.                  
  Natasha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming      
at him with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile.                    
                                                                            
BK11|CH18                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been           
living in the empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdeev. This is      
how it happened.                                                            
  When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his         
interview with Count Rostopchin, he could not for some time make out        
where he was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that        
among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a                 
Frenchman who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Helene,      
he felt suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and                    
hopelessness to which he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything        
was now at an end, all was in confusion and crumbling to pieces,            
that nobody was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was      
no escape from this position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to          
himself, he first sat down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then      
rose, went to the door of the reception room and peeped through the         
crack, returned flourishing his arms, and took up a book. His               
major-domo came in a second time to say that the Frenchman who had          
brought the letter from the countess was very anxious to see him if         
only for a minute, and that someone from Bazdeev's widow had called to      
ask Pierre to take charge of her husband's books, as she herself was        
leaving for the country.                                                    
  "Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say         
I will come directly," Pierre replied to the major-domo.                    
  But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat           
which was lying on the table and went out of his study by the other         
door. There was no one in the passage. He went along the whole              
length of this passage to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his          
forehead with both hands, went down as far as the first landing. The        
hall porter was standing at the front door. From the landing where          
Pierre stood there was a second staircase leading to the back               
entrance. He went down that staircase and out into the yard. No one         
had seen him. But there were some carriages waiting, and as soon as         
Pierre stepped out of the gate the coachmen and the yard porter             
noticed him and raised their caps to him. When he felt he was being         
looked at he behaved like an ostrich which hides its head in a bush in      
order not to be seen: he hung his head and quickening his pace went         
down the street.                                                            
  Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph         
Bazdeev's books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.              
                                                    {BK11|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the            
Patriarch's Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev's house was.                     
  Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that        
were making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing           
his bulky body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle,         
Pierre, experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school,      
began to talk to his driver.                                                
  The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the            
Kremlin and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the             
Three Hills gates and a great battle would be fought there.                 
  Having reached the Patriarch's Ponds Pierre found the Bazdeevs'           
house, where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the        
gate. Gerasim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at             
Torzhok five years before with Joseph Bazdeev, came out in answer to        
his knock.                                                                  
  "At home?" asked Pierre.                                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  "Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danilovna has gone to        
the Torzhok estate with the children, your excellency."                     
  "I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books,"          
said Pierre.                                                                
  "Be so good as to step in. Makar Alexeevich, the brother of my            
late master- may the kingdom of heaven be his- has remained here,           
but he is in a weak state as you know," said the old servant.               
  Pierre knew that Makar Alexeevich was Joseph Bazdeev's half-insane        
brother and a hard drinker.                                                 
  "Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in..." said Pierre and entered the           
house.                                                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown      
and with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing        
Pierre he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.       
  "He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your         
honor sees," said Gerasim. "Will you step into the study?" Pierre           
nodded. "As it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia                 
Danilovna gave orders that if anyone should come from you they were to      
have the books."                                                            
  Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such         
trepidation in his benefactor's lifetime. The room, dusty and               
untouched since the death of Joseph Bazdeev was now even gloomier.          
  Gerasim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe.           
Pierre went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the           
manuscripts were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most      
important, the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic          
Scotch Acts with Bazdeev's notes and explanations. He sat down at           
the dusty writing table, and, having laid the manuscripts before            
him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them away, and            
resting his head on his hand sank into meditation.                          
  Gerasim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw            
Pierre always sitting in the same attitude.                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH18 ^paragraph 20}
  More than two hours passed and Gerasim took the liberty of making         
a slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did         
not hear him.                                                               
  "Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?"                             
  "Oh yes!" said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. "Look        
here," he added, taking Gerasim by a button of his coat and looking         
down at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, "I say, do      
you know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?"                      
  "We heard so," replied the man.                                           
  "I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you."        
                                                   {BK11|CH18 ^paragraph 25}
  "Yes, your excellency," replied Gerasim. "Will you have something to      
eat?"                                                                       
  "No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a              
pistol," said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.                                
  "Yes, your excellency," said Gerasim after thinking for a moment.         
  All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor's           
study, and Gerasim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to           
another and talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made        
up for him there.                                                           
  Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange            
things, accepted Pierre's taking up his residence in the house without      
surprise, and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same          
evening- without even asking himself what they were wanted for- he          
procured a coachman's coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him      
the pistol next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening               
shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and          
looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward        
him he wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and           
angry look and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the                
coachman's coat which Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected      
by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the pistol at the          
Sukharev market that he met the Rostovs.                                    
                                                                            
BK11|CH19                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was          
issued at night on the first of September.                                  
  The first troops started at once, and during the night they               
marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those      
nearing the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of      
soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the          
opposite side and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless            
masses of troops were bearing down on them from behind, and an              
unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They all rushed forward          
to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and the boats. Kutuzov             
himself had driven round by side streets to the other side of Moscow.       
  By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September, only the        
rear guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample         
room. The main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.           
  At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,      
Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny Hill looking at      
the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to      
the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the         
entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,        
memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that        
always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat      
than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear        
atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and         
refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights         
are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and      
delight us continually by falling from the sky.                             
  At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather             
still held.                                                                 
                                                    {BK11|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the           
Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens,        
and her churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her           
cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight.                              
  The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as      
he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious           
and uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that      
has no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full      
force of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a             
distance, distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the      
Poklonny Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as          
it were, the breathing of that great and beautiful body.                    
  Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every           
foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the         
mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.        
  "Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou la sainte.        
La voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait temps,"* said he,        
and dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before         
him, and summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville, the interpreter.                     
-                                                                           
                                                   {BK11|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  *"That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy Moscow! Here        
it is then at last, that famous city. It was high time."                    
-                                                                           
  "A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her             
honor," thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at Smolensk). From            
that point of view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen          
before. It seemed strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had         
seemed unattainable, had at last been realized. In the clear morning        
light he gazed now at the city and now at the plan, considering its         
details, and the assurance of possessing it agitated and awed him.          
  "But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my      
feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange,        
beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In         
what light must I appear to them!" thought he, thinking of his troops.      
"Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men," he                
reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops who were            
approaching and forming up. "One word from me, one movement of my           
hand, and that ancient capital of the Tsars would perish. But my            
clemency is always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be          
magnanimous and truly great. But no, it can't be true that I am in          
Moscow," he suddenly thought. "Yet here she is lying at my feet,            
with her golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the        
sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism      
and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy....          
It is just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him."      
(It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what was taking             
place lay in the personal struggle between himself and Alexander.)          
"From the height of the Kremlin- yes, there is the Kremlin, yes- I          
will give them just laws; I will teach them the meaning of true             
civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember their              
conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do      
not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false policy        
of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in Moscow I      
will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I do not      
wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored monarch.        
'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire the peace      
and welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their presence will        
inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly,              
impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in             
Moscow? Yes, there she lies."                                               
  "Qu'on m'amene les boyars,"* said he to his suite.                        
                                                   {BK11|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  *"Bring the boyars to me."                                                
-                                                                           
  A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the        
boyars.                                                                     
  Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the      
same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to      
the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That        
speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.         
                                                   {BK11|CH19 ^paragraph 20}
  He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended        
to adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for            
assemblies at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and        
his own would mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who             
would win the hearts of the people. Having learned that there were          
many charitable institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he          
would shower favors on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he           
had to put on a burnoose and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must          
be beneficent like the Tsars. And in order finally to touch the hearts      
of the Russians- and being like all Frenchmen unable to imagine             
anything sentimental without a reference to ma chere, ma tendre, ma         
pauvre mere* - he decided that he would place an inscription on all         
these establishments in large letters: "This establishment is               
dedicated to my dear mother." Or no, it should be simply: Maison de ma      
Mere,*[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."                                                
-                                                                           
                                                   {BK11|CH19 ^paragraph 25}
  Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in                
whispers among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite.          
Those sent to fetch the deputation had returned with the news that          
Moscow was empty, that everyone had left it. The faces of those who         
were not conferring together were pale and perturbed. They were not         
alarmed by the fact that Moscow had been abandoned by its                   
inhabitants (grave as that fact seemed), but by the question how to         
tell the Emperor- without putting him in the terrible position of           
appearing ridiculous- that he had been awaiting the boyars so long          
in vain: that there were drunken mobs left in Moscow but no one             
else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must be scraped              
together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that the Emperor      
should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then told the        
truth.                                                                      
  "He will have to be told, all the same," said some gentlemen of           
the suite. "But, gentlemen..."                                              
  The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating         
upon his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before         
the outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from      
under his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.                        
  "But it's impossible..." declared the gentlemen of the suite,             
shrugging their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word-      
le ridicule...                                                              
  At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor's             
instinct suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too          
long drawn out was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with        
his hand. A single report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops,      
who were already spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into        
the city through Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov gates. Faster and            
faster, vying with one another, they moved at the double or at a trot,      
vanishing amid the clouds of dust they raised and making the air            
ring with a deafening roar of mingling shouts.                              
                                                   {BK11|CH19 ^paragraph 30}
  Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as         
far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there again stopped and,                   
dismounting from his horse, paced for a long time by the                    
Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting the deputation.                          
                                                                            
BK11|CH20                                                                   
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a      
fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was            
empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.      
  In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance        
it seems as much alive as other hives.                                      
  The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the            
midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it          
smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same        
way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no      
longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the             
smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the        
beekeeper's tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former         
instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their           
abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid               
vibration of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a        
disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From        
the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell        
of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor      
of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are          
no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and      
ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured        
quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water,         
but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long      
black robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do      
not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly only bees laden with        
honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out         
laden. The beekeeper opens the lower part of the hive and peers in.         
Instead of black, glossy bees- tamed by toil, clinging to one               
another's legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of labor-      
that used to hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive,           
drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions          
on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly glued floor,        
swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor         
littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees scarcely moving their      
legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away.                        
  The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the           
super. Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the          
combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex              
structures of the combs, but no longer in their former state of             
purity. All is neglected and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and        
stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home bees,               
shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without      
trying to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive and all sense          
of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies knock awkwardly         
against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here and there among         
the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can              
sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by force of habit      
and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their          
strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without knowing      
why they do it. In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting,      
or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without themselves          
knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile intent. In a third      
place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and         
fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops            
from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of corpses.      
The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the brood cells.      
In place of the former close dark circles formed by thousands of            
bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of generation,      
he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They         
have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they had            
guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only a      
few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the               
enemy's hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are          
dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the           
hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time tears out its contents      
and burns it clean.                                                         
  So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy,         
and morose, paced up and down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski              
rampart, awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal,          
observance of the proprieties- a deputation.                                
                                                    {BK11|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
  In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people            
aimlessly moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of      
what they were doing.                                                       
  When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed that Moscow was        
empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently        
continued to walk to and fro.                                               
  "My carriage!" he said.                                                   
  He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into           
the suburb. "Moscow deserted!" he said to himself. "What an incredible      
event!"                                                                     
  He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the               
Dorogomilov suburb.                                                         
                                                   {BK11|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  The coup de theatre had not come off.                                     
                                                                            
BK11|CH21                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXI                                                               
-                                                                           
  The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock at        
night till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded         
and the last of the inhabitants who were leaving.                           
  The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took place at        
the Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.                                       
  While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the         
Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges, a great many      
soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back      
from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church        
of Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the          
hill to the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily      
take things not belonging to them. Crowds of the kind seen at cheap         
sales filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were      
no dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers        
to enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of              
female purchasers- but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though      
without muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently              
making their way out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen           
and their assistants (of whom there were but few) moved about among         
the soldiers quite bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked         
them up again, and themselves carried goods away with the help their        
assistants. On the square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating      
the muster call. But the roll of the drums did not make the looting         
soldiers run in the direction of the drum as formerly, but made             
them, on the contrary, run farther away. Among the soldiers in the          
shops and passages some men were to be seen in gray coats, with             
closely shaven heads. Two officers, one with a scarf over his               
uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse, the other in an             
overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka Street,                
talking. A third officer galloped up to them.                               
  "The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail.      
This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed."                           
  "Where are you off to?... Where?..." he shouted to three infantrymen      
without muskets who, holding up the skirts of their overcoats, were         
slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. "Stop, you rascals!"             
                                                    {BK11|CH21 ^paragraph 5}
  "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...."                                
                                                   {BK11|CH21 ^paragraph 10}
  Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.                            
  "Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man.          
"When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair! Take what         
any of you like!" And flourishing his arm energetically he turned           
sideways to the officer.                                                    
  "It's all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk," said the first      
tradesman angrily. "Please step inside, your honor!"                        
  "Talk indeed!" cried the thin one. "In my three shops here I have         
a hundred thousand rubles' worth of goods. Can they be saved when           
the army has gone? Eh, what people! 'Against God's might our hands          
can't fight.'"                                                              
  "Come inside, your honor!" repeated the tradesman, bowing.                
                                                   {BK11|CH21 ^paragraph 15}
  The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.               
  "It's not my business!" he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one      
of the passages.                                                            
  From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and          
just as the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with a shaven        
head was flung out violently.                                               
  This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer.         
The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that      
moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the              
Moskva bridge and the officer ran out into the square.                      
  "What is it? What is it?" he asked, but his comrade was already           
galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction from which         
the screams came.                                                           
                                                   {BK11|CH21 ^paragraph 20}
  The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he reached         
the bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the            
bridge, several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing faces         
among the troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two        
horses were harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close        
to the wheels. The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside a      
child's chair with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman uttering        
piercing and desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers          
that the screams of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman were due to      
the fact that General Ermolov, coming up to the crowd and learning          
that soldiers were dispersing among the shops while crowds of               
civilians blocked the bridge, had ordered two guns to be unlimbered         
and made a show of firing at the bridge. The crowd, crushing one            
another, upsetting carts, and shouting and squeezing desperately,           
had cleared off the bridge and the troops were now moving forward.          
                                                                            
BK11|CH22                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone          
in the streets. The gates and shops were all closed, only here and          
there round the taverns solitary shouts or drunken songs could be           
heard. Nobody drove through the streets and footsteps were rarely           
heard. The Povarskaya was quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard      
of the Rostovs' house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung          
from the horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great          
drawing room of the house, which had been left with all it                  
contained, were two people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the        
page boy Mishka, Vasilich's grandson who had stayed in Moscow with his      
grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord and was strumming on          
it with one finger. The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling         
with satisfaction before the large mirror.                                  
  "Isn't it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?" said the boy, suddenly beginning        
to strike the keyboard with both hands.                                     
  "Only fancy!" answered Ignat, surprised at the broadening grin on         
his face in the mirror.                                                     
  "Impudence! Impudence!" they heard behind them the voice of Mavra         
Kuzminichna who had entered silently. "How he's grinning, the fat mug!      
Is that what you're here for? Nothing's cleared away down there and         
Vasilich is worn out. Just you wait a bit!"                                 
  Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of the            
room with meekly downcast eyes.                                             
                                                    {BK11|CH22 ^paragraph 5}
  "Aunt, I did it gently," said the boy.                                    
  "I'll give you something gently, you monkey you!" cried Mavra             
Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly. "Go and get the samovar to      
boil for your grandfather."                                                 
  Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord and closed it,      
and with a deep sigh left the drawing room and locked its main door.        
  Going out into the yard she paused to consider where she should go        
next- to drink tea in the servants' wing with Vasilich, or into the         
storeroom to put away what still lay about.                                 
  She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street.               
Someone stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to      
open it. Mavra Kuzminichna went to the gate.                                
                                                   {BK11|CH22 ^paragraph 10}
  "Who do you want?"                                                        
  "The count- Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov."                                
  "And who are you?"                                                        
  "An officer, I have to see him," came the reply in a pleasant,            
well-bred Russian voice.                                                    
  Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with        
the round face of a Rostov, entered the yard.                               
                                                   {BK11|CH22 ^paragraph 15}
  "They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime,"            
said Mavra Kuzminichna cordially.                                           
  The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating               
whether to enter or not, clicked his tongue.                                
  "Ah, how annoying!" he muttered. "I should have come yesterday....        
Ah, what a pity."                                                           
  Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and sympathetically          
examining the familiar Rostov features of the young man's face, his         
tattered coat and trodden-down boots.                                       
  "What did you want to see the count for?" she asked.                      
                                                   {BK11|CH22 ^paragraph 20}
  "Oh well... it can't be helped!" said he in a tone of vexation and        
placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.                                 
  He again paused in indecision.                                            
  "You see," he suddenly said, "I am a kinsman of the count's and he        
has been very kind to me. As you see" (he glanced with an amused air        
and good-natured smile at his coat and boots) "my things are worn           
out and I have no money, so I was going to ask the count..."                
  Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish.                                 
  "Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment," said she.                   
                                                   {BK11|CH22 ^paragraph 25}
  And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she turned and,      
hurrying away on her old legs, went through the back yard to the            
servants' quarters.                                                         
  While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room the officer walked        
about the yard gazing at his worn-out boots with lowered head and a         
faint smile on his lips. "What a pity I've missed Uncle! What a nice        
old woman! Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the               
nearest way to overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near      
the Rogozhski gate?" thought he. Just then Mavra Kuzminichna                
appeared from behind the corner of the house with a frightened yet          
resolute look, carrying a rolled-up check kerchief in her hand.             
While still a few steps from the officer she unfolded the kerchief and      
took out of it a white twenty-five-ruble assignat and hastily handed        
it to him.                                                                  
  "If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of             
course... but as it is..."                                                  
  Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not          
decline, but took the note quietly and thanked her.                         
  "If the count had been at home..." Mavra Kuzminichna went on              
apologetically. "Christ be with you, sir! May God preserve you!"            
said she, bowing as she saw him out.                                        
                                                   {BK11|CH22 ^paragraph 30}
  Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself, the officer         
ran almost at a trot through the deserted streets toward the Yauza          
bridge to overtake his regiment.                                            
  But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for some time with         
moist eyes, pensively swaying her head and feeling an unexpected            
flow of motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer.         
                                                                            
BK11|CH23                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of             
which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches             
round the tables in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands.         
Tipsy and perspiring, with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were         
all laboriously singing some song or other. They were singing               
discordantly, arduously, and with great effort, evidently not               
because they wished to sing, but because they wanted to show they were      
drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-haired lad in a clean blue          
coat, was standing over the others. His face with its fine straight         
nose would have been handsome had it not been for his thin,                 
compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed eyes. Evidently          
possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were singing, and           
solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white arm with        
the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out         
his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he         
always carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it            
were most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing            
should be bare. In the midst of the song cries were heard, and              
fighting and blows in the passage and porch. The tall lad waved his         
arm.                                                                        
  "Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's a fight, lads!"            
And, still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.                 
  The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the                  
leadership of the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning,      
had brought the publican some skins from the factory and for this           
had had drink served them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring               
smithy, hearing the sounds of revelry in the tavern and supposing it        
to have been broken into, wished to force their way in too and a fight      
in the porch had resulted.                                                  
  The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when         
the workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern      
keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.                                 
  Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the            
publican with his chest.                                                    
                                                    {BK11|CH23 ^paragraph 5}
  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?"                                                                     
                                                   {BK11|CH23 ^paragraph 10}
  The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from         
the publican to the smith and back again as if considering whom he          
ought to fight now.                                                         
  "Murderer!" he shouted suddenly to the publican. "Bind him, lads!"        
  "I daresay you would like to bind me!" shouted the publican, pushing      
away the men advancing on him, and snatching his cap from his head          
he flung it on the ground.                                                  
  As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the      
workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision.                      
  "I know the law very well, mates! I'll take the matter to the             
captain of police. You think I won't get to him? Robbery is not             
permitted to anybody now a days!" shouted the publican, picking up his      
cap.                                                                        
                                                   {BK11|CH23 ^paragraph 15}
  "Come along then! Come along then!" the publican and the tall             
young fellow repeated one after the other, and they moved up the            
street together.                                                            
  The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands and            
others followed behind, talking and shouting.                               
  At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with closed        
shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score of thin,        
worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and long                
tattered coats.                                                             
  "He should pay folks off properly," a thin workingman, with frowning      
brows and a straggly beard, was saying.                                     
  "But he's sucked our blood and now he thinks he's quit of us. He's        
been misleading us all the week and now that he's brought us to this        
pass he's made off."                                                        
                                                   {BK11|CH23 ^paragraph 20}
  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.          
                                                   {BK11|CH23 ^paragraph 25}
  The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe, waved his      
bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention      
to himself. It was around him that the people chiefly crowded,              
expecting answers from him to the questions that occupied all their         
minds.                                                                      
  "He must keep order, keep the law, that's what the government is          
there for. Am I not right, good Christians?" said the tall youth, with      
a scarcely perceptible smile. "He thinks there's no government! How         
can one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who'd rob      
us."                                                                        
  "Why talk nonsense?" rejoined voices in the crowd. "Will they give        
up Moscow like this? They told you that for fun, and you believed           
it! Aren't there plenty of troops on the march? Let him in, indeed!         
That's what the government is for. You'd better listen to what              
people are saying," said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth.        
  By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered         
round a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.                  
  "An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!" cried            
voices in the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader.               
                                                   {BK11|CH23 ^paragraph 30}
  The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August 31        
When the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but at the           
demand of the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him, he began in a      
rather tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning.                
  "Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness," he read               
("Sirin Highness," said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his      
lips and a frown on his brow), "to consult with him to act, and to aid      
the army to exterminate these scoundrels. We too will take part..."         
the reader went on, and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth        
victoriously, "he's going to clear up the whole affair for                  
you...."), "in destroying them, and will send these visitors to the         
devil. I will come back to dinner, and we'll set to work. We will           
do, completely do, and undo these scoundrels."                              
  The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence. The        
tall lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one had             
understood the last part. In particular, the words "I will come back        
to dinner," evidently displeased both reader and audience. The              
people's minds were tuned to a high pitch and this was too simple           
and needlessly comprehensible- it was what any one of them might            
have said and therefore was what an ukase emanating from the highest        
authority should not say.                                                   
  They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved his            
lips and swayed from side to side.                                          
  "We should ask him... that's he himself?"... "Yes, ask him                
indeed!... Why not? He'll explain"... voices in the rear of the             
crowd were suddenly heard saying, and the general attention turned          
to the police superintendent's trap which drove into the square             
attended by two mounted dragoons.                                           
                                                   {BK11|CH23 ^paragraph 35}
  The superintendent of police, who had that morning by Count               
Rostopchin's orders to burn the barges and had in connection with that      
matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment in his        
pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to        
stop.                                                                       
  "What people are these?" he shouted to the men, who were moving           
singly and timidly in the direction of his trap.                            
  "What people are these?" he shouted again, receiving no answer.           
  "Your honor..." replied the shopman in the frieze coat, "your honor,      
in accord with the proclamation of his highest excellency the count,        
they desire to serve, not sparing their lives, and it is not any            
kind of riot, but as his highest excellence said..."                        
  "The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued          
concerning you," said the superintendent of police. "Go on!" he             
ordered his coachman.                                                       
                                                   {BK11|CH23 ^paragraph 40}
  The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what the            
superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.                 
  The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a           
scared look, said something to his coachman, and his horses                 
increased their speed.                                                      
  "It's a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!" shouted the tall      
youth. "Don't let him go, lads! Let him answer us! Keep him!"               
shouted different people and the people dashed in pursuit of the trap.      
  Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly the             
crowd went in the direction of the Lubyanka Street.                         
  "There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to        
perish. Do they think we're dogs?" voices in the crowd were heard           
saying more and more frequently.                                            
                                                                            
BK11|CH24                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXIV                                                              
-                                                                           
  On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with        
Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned to Moscow mortified and              
offended because he had not been invited to attend the council of war,      
and because Kutuzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in      
the defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed          
to him at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital           
and its patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite                  
irrelevant and unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and               
surprised by all this, Rostopchin had returned to Moscow. After supper      
he lay down on a sofa without undressing, and was awakened soon             
after midnight by a courier bringing him a letter from Kutuzov. This        
letter requested the count to send police officers to guide the troops      
through the town, as the army was retreating to the Ryazan road beyond      
Moscow. This was not news to Rostopchin. He had known that Moscow           
would be abandoned not merely since his interview the previous day          
with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but ever since the battle of              
Borodino, for all the generals who came to Moscow after that battle         
had said unanimously that it was impossible to fight another battle,        
and since then the government property had been removed every night,        
and half the inhabitants had left the city with Rostopchin's own            
permission. Yet all the same this information astonished and irritated      
the count, coming as it did in the form of a simple note with an order      
from Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking in on his beauty sleep.       
  When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin explained his               
actions at this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated          
by two important considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow         
and expedite the departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this          
twofold aim all Rostopchin's actions appear irreproachable. "Why            
were the holy relics, the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of        
corn not removed? Why were thousands of inhabitants deceived into           
believing that Moscow would not be given up- and thereby ruined?"           
"To presence the tranquillity of the city," explains Count Rostopchin.      
"Why were bundles of useless papers from the government offices, and        
Leppich's balloon and other articles removed?" "To leave the town           
empty," explains Count Rostopchin. One need only admit that public          
tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification.             
  All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude      
for public tranquillity.                                                    
  On what, then, was Count Rostopchin's fear for the tranquillity of        
Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any                
probability of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving        
it and the retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause         
the masses to riot?                                                         
  Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling          
an insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than         
ten thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of         
September, and except for a mob in the governor's courtyard, assembled      
there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would      
have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people if      
after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of Moscow became           
certain or at least probable, Rostopchin instead of exciting the            
people by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to              
remove all the holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and        
had told the population plainly that the town would be abandoned.           
                                                    {BK11|CH24 ^paragraph 5}
  Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and        
impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative            
circles and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed           
himself to be guiding. Ever since the enemy's entry into Smolensk he        
had in imagination been playing the role of director of the popular         
feeling of "the heart of Russia." Not only did it seem to him (as to        
all administrators) that he controlled the external actions of              
Moscow's inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental        
attitude by means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a              
coarse tone which the people despise in their own class and do not          
understand from those in authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the      
fine role of leader of popular feeling, and had grown so used to it,        
that the necessity of relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow         
without any heroic display took him unawares and he suddenly felt           
the ground slip away from under his feet, so that he positively did         
not know what to do. Though he knew it was coming, he did not till the      
last moment wholeheartedly believe that Moscow would be abandoned, and      
did not prepare for it. The inhabitants left against his wishes. If         
the government offices were removed, this was only done on the              
demand of officials to whom the count yielded reluctantly. He was           
absorbed in the role he had created for himself. As is often the            
case with those gifted with an ardent imagination, though he had            
long known that Moscow would be abandoned he knew it only with his          
intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and did not adapt             
himself mentally to this new position of affairs.                           
  All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful      
and had any effect on the people is another question) had been              
simply directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of            
patriotic hatred of the French.                                             
  But when events assumed their true historical character, when             
expressing hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it      
was not even possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle,          
when self-confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question        
before Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one      
man, abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action        
all the depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by            
Rostopchin suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself        
ridiculous, weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on.                    
  When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory          
note from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself      
to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state        
property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it           
was no longer possible to take the whole of it away.                        
  "Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?" he      
ruminated. "Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow          
firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains!        
Traitors!" he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and        
traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever      
they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous                
position in which he found himself.                                         
                                                   {BK11|CH24 ^paragraph 10}
  All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for which people came      
to him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the         
count so morose and irritable.                                              
  "Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar's Department has          
sent for instructions... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from         
the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent...      
asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire              
Brigade? From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of      
the lunatic asylum..." All night long such announcements were               
continually being received by the count.                                    
  To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating         
that orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair,            
carefully prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that        
that somebody would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that      
might happen.                                                               
  "Oh, tell that blockhead," he said in reply to the question from the      
Registrar's Department, "that he should remain to guard his documents.      
Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They         
have horses, let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the         
French."                                                                    
  "Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come:      
what are your commands?"                                                    
                                                   {BK11|CH24 ^paragraph 15}
  "My commands? Let them go away, that's all.... And let the                
lunatics out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God            
evidently means these other madmen to be free."                             
  In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count            
Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor:                                 
  "Do you expect me to give you two battalions- which we have not got-      
for a convoy? Release them, that's all about it!"                           
  "Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkov,            
Vereshchagin..."                                                            
  "Vereshchagin! Hasn't he been hanged yet?" shouted Rostopchin.            
"Bring him to me!"                                                          
                                                                            
BK11|CH25                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXV                                                               
-                                                                           
  Toward nine o'clock in the morning, when the troops were already          
moving through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for                
instructions. Those who were able to get away were going of their           
own accord, those who remained behind decided for themselves what they      
must do.                                                                    
  The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, and      
sat in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.           
  In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that        
it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule          
is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable             
every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts.        
While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his        
frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people           
and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the            
ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea         
begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer          
possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion,        
the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the         
administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power,          
becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.                              
  Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated him.              
  The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in to      
see him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count that         
the horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent      
of police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he         
had received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collected        
in the courtyard and wished to see him.                                     
                                                    {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 5}
  Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked hastily to his           
light, luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took hold          
of the handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which he        
had a better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in          
front, flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. The      
blood stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone of         
voices was audible through the closed window.                               
  "Is my carriage ready?" asked Rostopchin, stepping back from the          
window.                                                                     
  "It is, your excellency," replied the adjutant.                           
  Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.                                
  "But what do they want?" he asked the superintendent of police.           
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 10}
  "Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to your         
orders, to go against the French, and they shouted something about          
treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency- I hardly           
managed to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..."      
  "You may go. I don't need you to tell me what to do!" exclaimed           
Rostopchin angrily.                                                         
  He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.                        
  "This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have          
done with me!" thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled        
up within him against the someone to whom what was happening might          
be attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he was              
mastered by anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it.      
"Here is that mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed at      
the crowd: "this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want a        
victim," he thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his            
arm. And this thought occurred to him just because he himself               
desired a victim, something on which to vent his rage.                      
  "Is the carriage ready?" he asked again.                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? He        
is waiting at the porch," said the adjutant.                                
  "Ah!" exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpected                 
recollection.                                                               
  And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto the              
balcony. The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed,           
and all eyes were raised to the count.                                      
  "Good morning, lads!" said the count briskly and loudly. "Thank           
you for coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we must first         
settle with the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused the      
ruin of Moscow. Wait for me!"                                               
  And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammed           
the door behind him.                                                        
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 20}
  A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd.           
"He'll settle with all the villains, you'll see! And you said the           
French... He'll show you what law is!" the mob were saying as if            
reproving one another for their lack of confidence.                         
  A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door,      
gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd moved          
eagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming out           
there with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking           
someone.                                                                    
  "Where is he?" he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young man            
coming round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had a         
long thin neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was again          
covered by short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue      
cloth coat lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty          
hempen convict trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty,            
trodden-down boots. On his thin, weak legs were heavy chains which          
hampered his irresolute movements.                                          
  "Ah!" said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes from the           
young man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of the      
porch. "Put him there."                                                     
  The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to the            
spot indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar which          
chafed his neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed,      
and submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work.          
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 25}
  For several seconds while the young man was taking his place on           
the step the silence continued. Only among the back rows of the             
people, who were all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs,             
groans, and the shuffling of feet be heard.                                 
  While waiting for the young man to take his place on the step             
Rostopchin stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.               
  "Lads!" said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. "This man,            
Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing."         
  The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in a        
submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciated          
young face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down                   
hopelessly. At the count's first words he raised it slowly and              
looked up at him as if wishing to say something or at least to meet         
his eye. But Rostopchin did not look at him. A vein in the young man's      
long thin neck swelled like a cord and went blue behind the ear, and        
suddenly his face flushed.                                                  
  All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and rendered          
more hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled        
sadly and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step.      
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 30}
  "He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he had gone over to            
Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian           
name, he has caused Moscow to perish," said Rostopchin in a sharp,          
even voice, but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who continued      
to stand in the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight,      
he raised his arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:                
  "Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you."                 
  The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer to           
one another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stifling          
atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown,           
uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those                
standing in front, who had seen and heard what had taken place              
before them, all stood with wide open eyes and mouths, straining            
with all their strength, and held back the crowd that was pushing           
behind them.                                                                
  "Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russian         
name!" shouted Rostopchin. "Cut him down. I command it."                    
  Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin's           
voice, the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.               
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 35}
  "Count!" exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchagin in      
the midst of the momentary silence that ensued, "Count! One God is          
above us both...." He lifted his head and again the thick vein in           
his thin neck filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went in      
his face.                                                                   
  He did not finish what he wished to say.                                  
  "Cut him down! I command it..." shouted Rostopchin, suddenly growing      
pale like Vereshchagin.                                                     
  "Draw sabers!" cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own.                
  Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reaching         
the front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. The      
tall youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm,      
stood beside Vereshchagin.                                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 40}
  "Saber him!" the dragoon officer almost whispered.                        
  And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury,        
struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.           
  "Ah!" cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round with a           
frightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him.         
A similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. "O Lord!"      
exclaimed a sorrowful voice.                                                
  But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from               
Vereshchagin he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was           
fatal. The barrier of human feeling, strained to the utmost, that           
had held the crowd in check suddenly broke. The crime had begun and         
must now be completed. The plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by        
the threatening and angry roar of the crowd. Like the seventh and last      
wave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible wave burst from           
the rear and reached the front ranks, carrying them off their feet and      
engulfing them all. The dragoon was about to repeat his blow.               
Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering his head with his hands,        
rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth, against whom he stumbled,          
seized his thin neck with his hands and, yelling wildly, fell with him      
under the feet of the pressing, struggling crowd.                           
  Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall youth. And         
the screams of those that were being trampled on and of those who           
tried to rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd.          
It was a long time before the dragoons could extricate the bleeding         
youth, beaten almost to death. And for a long time, despite the             
feverish haste with which the mob tried to end the work that had            
been begun, those who were hitting, throttling, and tearing at              
Vereshchagin were unable to kill him, for the crowd pressed from all        
sides, swaying as one mass with them in the center and rendering it         
impossible for them either to kill him or let him go.                       
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 45}
  "Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold                  
Christ.... Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture            
serves a thief right. Use the hatchet!... What- still alive?"               
  Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to a        
long-drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around his                  
prostrate, bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each one         
came up, glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and      
astonishment pushed back again.                                             
  "O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?"         
voices in the crowd could be heard saying. "Quite a young fellow            
too... must have been a merchant's son. What men!... and they say he's      
not the right one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there's         
another has been beaten too- they say he's nearly done for.... Oh, the      
people... Aren't they afraid of sinning?..." said the same mob now,         
looking with pained distress at the dead body with its long, thin,          
half-severed neck and its livid face stained with blood and dust.           
  A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpse        
in his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it        
away. Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it             
along the ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its         
long neck trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back          
from it.                                                                    
  At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in with         
savage yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale          
and, instead of going to the back entrance where his carriage               
awaited him, went with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing             
where and why, along the passage leading to the rooms on the ground         
floor. The count's face was white and he could not control the              
feverish twitching of his lower jaw.                                        
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 50}
  "This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,           
please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.                   
  Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went        
in the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche.         
The distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He            
hastily took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his             
country house in Sokolniki.                                                 
  When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear the      
shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with            
dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his           
subordinates. "The mob is terrible- disgusting," he said to himself in      
French. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease."          
"Count! One God is above us both!"- Vereshchagin's words suddenly           
recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this      
was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled                    
disdainfully at himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The people      
had to be appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing      
for the public good"- and he began thinking of his social duties to         
his family and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself- not            
himself as Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore        
Vasilyevich Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good)         
but himself as governor, the representative of authority and of the         
Tsar. "Had I been simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action           
would have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard my         
life and dignity as commander in chief."                                    
  Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no            
longer hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew            
physically calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became                
physically tranquil his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally      
tranquil too. The thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new      
one. Since the world began and men have killed one another no one           
has ever committed such a crime against his fellow man without              
comforting himself with this same idea. This idea is le bien public,        
the hypothetical welfare of other people.                                   
  To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he      
who commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies.         
And Rostopchin now knew it.                                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 55}
  Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but        
he even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully         
contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a          
criminal and at the same time pacify the mob.                               
  "Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thought                  
Rostopchin (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to            
hard labor), "he was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go            
unpunished and so I have killed two birds with one stone: to appease        
the mob I gave them a victim and at the same time punished a                
miscreant."                                                                 
  Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about           
domestic arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.                       
  Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the         
Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but                
considering what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where      
he had heard that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing      
the angry and stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov for        
his deception. He would make that foxy old courtier feel that the           
responsibility for all the calamities that would follow the                 
abandonment of the city and the ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded      
it) would fall upon his doting old head. Planning beforehand what he        
would say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin turned angrily in his caleche and          
gazed sternly from side to side.                                            
  The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of      
the almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in          
white and others like them walking singly across the field shouting         
and gesticulating.                                                          
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 60}
  One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin's          
carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons looked      
with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and              
especially at the one running toward them.                                  
  Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering        
dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on      
Rostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs to        
him to stop. The lunatic's solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow,         
with its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with        
saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.              
  "Stop! Pull up, I tell you!" he cried in a piercing voice, and again      
shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.      
  Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.                           
  "Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead.            
They stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shall         
rise. They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown...      
Thrice will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!" he cried,           
raising his voice higher and higher.                                        
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 65}
  Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd         
closed in on Vereshchagin. He turned away. "Go fas... faster!" he           
cried in a trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew over           
the ground as fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long time         
Count Rostopchin still heard the insane despairing screams growing          
fainter in the distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the                 
astonished, frightened, bloodstained face of "the traitor" in the           
fur-lined coat.                                                             
  Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already felt that it        
had cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt               
clearly that the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with        
time, but that the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in         
his heart ever more cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He        
seemed still to hear the sound of his own words: "Cut him down! I           
command it...."                                                             
  "Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said              
them.... I need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothing          
would have happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated face        
of the dragoon who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid                
reproach that boy in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But I         
did not do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... The          
mob, the traitor... the public welfare," thought he.                        
  Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov,      
dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his         
whip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a               
general's uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said        
something in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that          
he had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army      
remained.                                                                   
  "Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not         
told me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle;           
all this would not have happened," he said.                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH25 ^paragraph 70}
  Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said to         
him, he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment        
on the face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused and         
became silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his           
penetrating gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly:                    
  "No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!"                        
  Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when he      
spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be            
meaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left          
him. And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count            
Rostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he          
began with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the way.               
                                                                            
BK11|CH26                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXVI                                                              
-                                                                           
  Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering         
Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind        
them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.       
  About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the              
Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the        
advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the         
citadel, le Kremlin.                                                        
  Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow.        
They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired           
commander dressed up in feathers and gold.                                  
  "Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could be           
heard saying.                                                               
  An interpreter rode up to the group.                                      
                                                    {BK11|CH26 ^paragraph 5}
  "Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one to            
another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and           
asked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in                
perplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that           
the interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what was           
being said to him and slipped behind the others.                            
  Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the            
Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and         
several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French            
officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat           
and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and          
that there was probably an ambuscade there.                                 
  "Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his            
suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the           
gates.                                                                      
  The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and            
advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka        
Street they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers          
superintended the placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin             
through field glasses.                                                      
  The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound         
troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few           
infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had          
been put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as        
soon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was        
standing by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and      
the latter ran back again with his men.                                     
                                                   {BK11|CH26 ^paragraph 10}
  The sound of three more shots came from the gate.                         
  One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screens      
came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a          
word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of         
the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined          
concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from        
the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,      
Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar        
in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove                
sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the          
gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash         
off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This was          
followed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one after                
another. The shot rattled against the stone of the gate and upon the        
wooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over        
the Square.                                                                 
  A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the          
stone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound          
above their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and               
circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings.                
Together with that sound came a solitary human cry from the gateway         
and amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a             
peasant's coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French.             
"Fire!" repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket         
and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The gate again           
hidden by smoke.                                                            
  Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry           
soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three        
wounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot        
of the wall, toward the Znamenka.                                           
  "Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and the        
corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw      
the corpses over the parapet.                                               
                                                   {BK11|CH26 ^paragraph 15}
  Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all that           
was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed         
later on that they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few            
eloquent lines to their memory: "These wretches had occupied the            
sacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal,      
and fired" (the wretches) "at the French. Some of them were sabered         
and the Kremlin was purged of their presence."                              
  Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered      
the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of        
the windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the          
Square for fuel and kindled fires there.                                    
  Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along           
the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered         
themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy           
Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French          
were not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in      
it as in a camp.                                                            
  Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their        
original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order.          
It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army.        
But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into          
their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various                 
regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the      
army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript,      
neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When         
five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed          
an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of          
articles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man        
when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but          
merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its           
paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts      
will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore      
perishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish         
because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they         
had stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to            
open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment        
had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left.           
Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the        
windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars and             
storerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in the           
yards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors,              
lighting fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with               
rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or                 
caressing women and children. There were many such men both in the          
shops and houses- but there was no army.                                    
  Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day            
forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding           
any violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a            
roll call for that very evening. But despite all these measures the         
men, who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over the             
wealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As         
a hungry herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren          
field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as         
soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all over         
the wealthy city.                                                           
                                                   {BK11|CH26 ^paragraph 20}
  No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers- like water            
percolating through sand- spread irresistibly through the city in           
all directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The      
cavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned and         
finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,      
all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of        
them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and          
quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they        
had had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the               
streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had been               
abandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to be had for the          
taking. The officers followed to check the soldiers and were                
involuntarily drawn into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages had      
been left in the shops, and generals flocked there to select                
caleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who had            
remained invited commanding officers to their houses, hoping thereby        
to secure themselves from being plundered. There were masses of wealth      
and there seemed no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by the      
French were other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where,            
they thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow engulfed        
the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is spilled on dry ground        
both the dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and in         
the same way the entry of the famished army into the rich and deserted      
city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction of both the          
army and the wealthy city.                                                  
-                                                                           
  The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de         
Rostopchine,* the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,      
however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning      
of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people,                 
responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a          
position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite           
apart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior        
fire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of        
shavings has to burn on which sparks continually fall for several           
days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes without             
conflagrations when the house owners are in residence and a police          
force is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have left        
it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of        
the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals           
twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops in the      
villages of any district and the number of fires in that district           
immediately increases. How much then must the probability of fire be        
increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops are             
quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity of      
the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire          
by the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the                 
carelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even      
if there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any          
reason to burn the houses- in any case a troublesome and dangerous          
thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same           
thing would have happened without any incendiarism.                         
-                                                                           
  *To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.                                    
                                                   {BK11|CH26 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin's         
ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later        
on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is         
impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of           
the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house        
must burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are            
allowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its           
inhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not          
by those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not      
remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its      
inhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and      
salt, nor bring them the keys of the city.                                  
                                                                            
BK11|CH27                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXVII                                                             
-                                                                           
  The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it          
did, only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the               
evening of the second of September.                                         
  After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,      
Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely              
obsessed by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this        
thought had taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of      
the past, understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and             
heard appeared to him like a dream.                                         
  He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life's            
demands that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was        
unable to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexeevich's house, on the         
plea of sorting the deceased's books and papers, only in search of          
rest from life's turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph              
Alexeevich was connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm          
thoughts, quite contrary to the restless confusion into which he            
felt himself being drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph           
Alexeevich's study he really found it. When he sat with his elbows          
on the dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study,         
calm and significant memories of the last few days rose one after           
another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and      
of that vague sense of his own insignificance and insincerity compared      
with the truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he             
mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his reverie the      
idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense of Moscow        
which he knew was projected. And with that object he had asked Gerasim      
to get him a peasant's coat and a pistol, confiding to him his              
intentions of remaining in Joseph Alexeevich's house and keeping his        
name secret. Then during the first day spent in inaction and                
solitude (he tried several times to fix his attention on the Masonic        
manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea that had previously          
occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of his name in               
connection with Bonaparte's more than once vaguely presented itself.        
But the idea that he, L'russe Besuhof, was destined to set a limit          
to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that           
often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.                     
  When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part        
among the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the               
Rostovs and Natasha had said to him: "Are you remaining in                  
Moscow?... How splendid!" the thought flashed into his mind that it         
really would be a good thing, even if Moscow were taken, for him to         
remain there and do what he was predestined to do.                          
  Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not               
lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate.        
But when he returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be        
defended, he suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a      
possibility had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He          
must remain in Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and      
kill him, and either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe-      
which it seemed to him was solely due to Napoleon.                          
                                                    {BK11|CH27 ^paragraph 5}
  Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte's life in         
1809 by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been      
shot. And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out        
his design excited him still more.                                          
  Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this              
purpose. The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and          
suffering in view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had         
caused him to go to Mozhaysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way        
to the very thick of the battle and had now caused him to run away          
from his home and, in place of the luxury and comfort to which he           
was accustomed, to sleep on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the      
same food as Gerasim. The other was that vague and quite Russian            
feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and            
human- for everything the majority of men regard as the greatest            
good in the world. Pierre had first experienced this strange and            
fascinating feeling at the Sloboda Palace, when he had suddenly felt        
that wealth, power, and life- all that men so painstakingly acquire         
and guard- if it has any worth has so only by reason the joy with           
which it can all be renounced.                                              
  It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his          
last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for      
no apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money          
he possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions             
which from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it             
were, his personal power and strength, affirming the existence of a         
higher, nonhuman criterion of life.                                         
  From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the             
first time at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its         
influence, but only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at        
this moment Pierre was supported in his design and prevented from           
renouncing it by what he had already done in that direction. If he          
were now to leave Moscow like everyone else, his flight from home, the      
peasant coat, the pistol, and his announcement to the Rostovs that          
he would remain in Moscow would all become not merely meaningless           
but contemptible and ridiculous, and to this Pierre was very                
sensitive.                                                                  
  Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded          
to his mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he             
drank during those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty          
unchanged linen, two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa         
without bedding- all this kept him in a state of excitement                 
bordering on insanity.                                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH27 ^paragraph 10}
  It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The French had already               
entered Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only             
thought about his undertaking, going over its minutest details in           
his mind. In his fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either         
the striking of the blow or the death of Napoleon, but with                 
extraordinary vividness and melancholy enjoyment imagined his own           
destruction and heroic endurance.                                           
  "Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!" he             
thought. "Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol          
or dagger? But that is all the same! 'It is not I but the hand of           
Providence that punishes thee,' I shall say," thought he, imagining         
what he would say when killing Napoleon. "Well then, take me and            
execute me!" he went on, speaking to himself and bowing his head            
with a sad but firm expression.                                             
  While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to          
himself in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold             
appeared the figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but         
now quite transformed.                                                      
  His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He was      
obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but            
noticing embarrassment on Pierre's face immediately grew bold and,          
staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.          
  "They're frightened," he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. "I        
say I won't surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?"                       
                                                   {BK11|CH27 ^paragraph 15}
  He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it      
with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.                     
  Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped        
him in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre,         
coming out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the         
half-crazy old man. Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held          
on to the pistol and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic          
fancy in his head.                                                          
  "To arms! Board them! No, you shan't get it," he yelled.                  
  "That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness- please, sir,      
to let go! Please, sir..." pleaded Gerasim, trying carefully to             
steer Makar Alexeevich by the elbows back to the door.                      
  "Who are you? Bonaparte!..." shouted Makar Alexeevich.                    
                                                   {BK11|CH27 ^paragraph 20}
  "That's not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow        
me to have the pistol."                                                     
  "Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?" shouted Makar          
Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. "Board them!"                           
  "Catch hold!" whispered Gerasim to the porter.                            
  They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged him to the           
door.                                                                       
  The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle         
and of a tipsy, hoarse voice.                                               
                                                   {BK11|CH27 ^paragraph 25}
  Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated          
from the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule.                
  "It's them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!" she        
cried.                                                                      
  Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now            
silent corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front            
door could be heard.                                                        
                                                                            
BK11|CH28                                                                   
  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!"                                                   
                                                    {BK11|CH28 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  No one gave any reply.                                                    
  "Vous etes le bourgeois?"* the officer asked Gerasim.                     
-                                                                           
  *"Are you the master here?"                                               
                                                   {BK11|CH28 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look.          
  "Quartier, quartier, logement!" said the officer, looking down at         
the little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. "Les            
francais sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons          
pas, mon vieux!"* added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim          
on the shoulder. "Well, does no one speak French in this                    
establishment?" he asked again in French, looking around and meeting        
Pierre's eyes. Pierre moved away from the door.                             
-                                                                           
  *"Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good fellows. What         
the devil! There, don't let us be cross, old fellow!"                       
                                                   {BK11|CH28 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to show him the         
rooms in the house.                                                         
  "Master, not here- don't understand... me, you..." said Gerasim,          
trying to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.          
  Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before             
Gerasim's nose, intimating that he did not understand him either,           
and moved, limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre        
wished to go away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar      
Alexeevich appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his        
hand. With a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman,         
raised his pistol, and took aim.                                            
  "Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger.          
Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment           
Pierre threw himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and      
struck up the pistol Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the        
trigger, there was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a          
cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door.           
                                                   {BK11|CH28 ^paragraph 20}
  Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French,           
Pierre, snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to           
the officer and addressed him in French.                                    
  "You are not wounded?" he asked.                                          
  "I think not," answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. "But         
I have had a lucky escape this time," he added, pointing to the             
damaged plaster of the wall. "Who is that man?" said he, looking            
sternly at Pierre.                                                          
  "Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred," said Pierre            
rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. "He is          
an unfortunate madman who did not know what he was doing."                  
  The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar.       
                                                   {BK11|CH28 ^paragraph 25}
  Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about      
to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.                              
  "Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go of      
him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon            
traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine               
energetic gesture.                                                          
  Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold          
that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence         
with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with         
a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome        
face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he held out           
his hand.                                                                   
  "You have saved my life. You are French," said he.                        
  For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman          
could perform a great deed, and to save his life- the life of M.            
Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Regiment- was undoubtedly a very        
great deed.                                                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH28 ^paragraph 30}
  But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction      
based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.                 
  "I am Russian," he said quickly.                                          
  "Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others," said the officer, waving his        
finger before his nose and smiling. "You shall tell me all about            
that presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what         
are we to do with this man?" he added, addressing himself to Pierre as      
to a brother.                                                               
  Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that            
loftiest of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the           
officer's look and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again         
explained who Makar Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival        
that drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol which they had           
not had time to recover from him, and begged the officer to let the         
deed go unpunished.                                                         
  The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with         
his arm.                                                                    
                                                   {BK11|CH28 ^paragraph 35}
  "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?"                                                
                                                   {BK11|CH28 ^paragraph 40}
  "Yes, and some wine," answered the captain.                               
                                                                            
BK11|CH29                                                                   
  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?"                        
                                                    {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 5}
  Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing,         
began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason         
for concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.               
  "Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an             
officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us.      
That's not my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am      
quite at your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with         
a shade of inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your                 
baptismal name, if you please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you      
say.... That's all I want to know."                                         
  When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and           
vodka brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a             
Russian cellar and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share      
his dinner, and himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a            
healthy and hungry man, munching his food rapidly with his strong           
teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating- "Excellent!            
Delicious!" His face grew red and was covered with perspiration.            
Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the           
orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of        
claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the             
kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known to the French      
and had been given a special name. They called it limonade de cochon        
(pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de cochon he         
had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had          
taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and          
applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to      
its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for          
Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the            
captain still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through            
dinner.                                                                     
  "Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for         
saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my         
body already. Here is one I got at Wagram" (he touched his side)            
"and a second at Smolensk"- he showed a scar on his cheek- "and this        
leg which as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh      
at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That        
deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us              
there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of        
the cough I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity          
those who did not see it."                                                  
  "I was there," said Pierre.                                               
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 10}
  "Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes.           
The great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!" continued the Frenchman.      
"And you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times- sure as I        
sit here. Three times we reached the guns and three times we were           
thrown back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur          
Pierre! Your grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close          
up their ranks six times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine      
fellows! Our King of Naples, who knows what's what, cried 'Bravo!' Ha,      
ha! So you are one of us soldiers!" he added, smiling, after a              
momentary pause. "So much the better, so much the better, Monsieur          
Pierre! Terrible in battle... gallant... with the fair" (he winked and      
smiled), "that's what the French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren't they?"        
  The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so        
pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked            
merrily at him. Probably the word "gallant" turned the captain's            
thoughts to the state of Moscow.                                            
  "Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left         
Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?"                  
  "Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered          
it?" asked Pierre.                                                          
  "Ha, ha, ha!" The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle,            
patting Pierre on the shoulder. "What a thing to say!" he exclaimed.        
"Paris?... But Paris, Paris..."                                             
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 15}
  "Paris- the capital of the world," Pierre finished his remark for         
him.                                                                        
  The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in         
the middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly        
eyes.                                                                       
  "Well, if you hadn't told me you were Russian, I should have wagered      
that you were Parisian! You have that... I don't know what, that..."        
and having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.       
  "I have been in Paris. I spent years there," said Pierre.                 
  "Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn't know          
Paris is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is        
Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards," and             
noticing that his conclusion was weaker than what had gone before,          
he added quickly: "There is only one Paris in the world. You have been      
to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I don't esteem you the            
less for it."                                                               
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                   
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 25}
  The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.                       
  "No, he will make his entry tomorrow," he replied, and continued his      
talk.                                                                       
  Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at      
the gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Wurttemberg hussars        
had come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the            
captain's horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because           
the hussars did not understand what was said to them in French.             
  The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern           
voice asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding        
officer, and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that        
were already occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the      
two first questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his          
commanding officer, but in reply to the third question which he did         
not understand said, introducing broken French into his own German,         
that he was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had         
ordered him to occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who         
knew German, translated what the German said to the captain and gave        
the captain's reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had        
understood what was said to him, the German submitted and took his men      
elsewhere. The captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in      
a loud voice.                                                               
  When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as      
before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He        
really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and          
he was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the             
position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that           
the happy conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him.           
Painful as that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the           
moment. He was tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The      
few glasses of wine he had drunk and the conversation with this             
good-natured man had destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which      
he had spent the last few days and which was essential for the              
execution of his design. The pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were          
ready. Napoleon was to enter the town next day. Pierre still                
considered that it would be a useful and worthy action to slay the          
evildoer, but now he felt that he would not do it. He did not know          
why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not carry out his               
intention. He struggled against the confession of his weakness but          
dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that his former gloomy         
frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and self-sacrifice,           
had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first man he met.          
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 30}
  The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a        
tune.                                                                       
  The Frenchman's chatter which had previously amused Pierre now            
repelled him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture          
with which he twirled his mustache, all now seemed offensive. "I            
will go away immediately. I won't say another word to him," thought         
Pierre. He thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange         
feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go        
away, but could not do so.                                                  
  The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up         
and down the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as        
if he were smiling to himself at some amusing thought.                      
  "The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful," he suddenly          
said. "He's a German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he's a         
German." He sat down facing Pierre. "By the way, you know German,           
then?"                                                                      
  Pierre looked at him in silence.                                          
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 35}
  "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.                               
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 40}
  "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.                                                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 45}
  "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."                       
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 50}
  And with a Frenchman's easy and naive frankness the captain told          
Pierre the story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and                
manhood, and all about his relations and his financial and family           
affairs, "ma pauvre mere" playing of course an important part in the        
story.                                                                      
  "But all that is only life's setting, the real thing is love-             
love! Am I not right, Monsieur Pierre?" said he, growing animated.          
"Another glass?"                                                            
  Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third.            
  "Oh, women, women!" and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at      
Pierre, began talking of love and of his love affairs.                      
  There were very many of these, as one could easily believe,               
looking at the officer's handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the      
eager enthusiasm with which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe's        
love stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the        
special charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such           
sincere conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the          
charm of love and he described women so alluringly that Pierre              
listened to him with curiosity.                                             
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 55}
  It was plain that l'amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not      
that low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor        
was it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for      
Natasha. (Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the           
one he considered the "love of clodhoppers" and the other the "love of      
simpletons.") L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted               
principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a      
combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.         
  Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a         
fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a              
charming, innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching           
marquise. The conflict of magnanimity between the mother and the            
daughter, ending in the mother's sacrificing herself and offering           
her daughter in marriage to her lover, even now agitated the                
captain, though it was the memory of a distant past. Then he recounted      
an episode in which the husband played the part of the lover, and           
he- the lover- assumed the role of the husband, as well as several          
droll incidents from his recollections of Germany, where "shelter"          
is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat sauerkraut and the          
young girls are "too blonde."                                               
  Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain's        
memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face,         
was of how he had saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving          
of life continually occurred in the captain's stories) and the Pole         
had entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur) while        
himself entering the French service. The captain was happy, the             
enchanting Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by           
magnanimity, the captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as        
he did so: "I have saved your life, and I save your honor!" Having          
repeated these words the captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a          
shake, as if driving away the weakness which assailed him at this           
touching recollection.                                                      
  Listening to the captain's tales, Pierre- as often happens late in        
the evening and under the influence of wine- followed all that was          
told him, understood it all, and at the same time followed a train          
of personal memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his          
mind. While listening to these love stories his own love for Natasha        
unexpectedly rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that          
love in his imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe's           
tales. Listening to the story of the struggle between love and duty,        
Pierre saw before his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting        
with the object of his love at the Sukharev water tower. At the time        
of that meeting it had not produced an effect upon him- he had not          
even once recalled it. But now it seemed to him that that meeting           
had had in it something very important and poetic.                          
  "Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you," he now seemed      
to hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes,           
her smile, her traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and          
there seemed to him something pathetic and touching in all this.            
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 60}
  Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the            
captain asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to        
sacrifice himself for love and a feeling of envy of the legitimate          
husband.                                                                    
  Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need        
to express the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that      
he understood love for a women somewhat differently. He said that in        
all his life he had loved and still loved only one woman, and that she      
could never be his.                                                         
  "Tiens!" said the captain.                                                
  Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest      
years, but that he had not dared to think of her because she was too        
young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name.          
Afterwards when he had received a name and wealth he dared not think        
of her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything      
in the world, and especially therefore above himself.                       
  When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether          
he understood that.                                                         
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 65}
  The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not             
understand it he begged Pierre to continue.                                 
  "Platonic love, clouds..." he muttered.                                   
  Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or      
the thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of             
those who played a part in his story, or whether it was all these           
things together, something loosened Pierre's tongue. Speaking               
thickly and with a faraway look in his shining eyes, he told the whole      
story of his life: his marriage, Natasha's love for his best friend,        
her betrayal of him, and all his own simple relations with her.             
Urged on by Ramballe's questions he also told what he had at first          
concealed- his own position and even his name.                              
  More than anything else in Pierre's story the captain was                 
impressed by the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in        
Moscow, and that he had abandoned everything and not left the city,         
but remained there concealing his name and station.                         
  When it was late at night they went out together into the street.         
The night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokrovka      
a fire glowed- the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To         
the right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and      
opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in                
Pierre's heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and      
two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible           
remarks in two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow      
seen in the town.                                                           
                                                   {BK11|CH29 ^paragraph 70}
  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.                                                    
                                                                            
BK11|CH30                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXX                                                               
-                                                                           
  The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was      
watched from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the        
retreating troops, with many different feelings.                            
  The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen miles from        
Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road        
had been so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many things had been         
forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided          
to spend that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next          
morning they woke late and were again delayed so often that they            
only got as far as Great Mytishchi. At ten o'clock that evening the         
Rostov family and the wounded traveling with them were all distributed      
in the yards and huts of that large village. The Rostovs' servants and      
coachmen and the orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to      
their masters, had supper, fed the horses, and came out into the            
porches.                                                                    
  In a neighboring hut lay Raevski's adjutant with a fractured              
wrist. The awful pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and             
piteously, and his moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the          
autumn night. He had spent the first night in the same yard as the          
Rostovs. The countess said she had been unable to close her eyes on         
account of his moaning, and at Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut         
simply to be farther away from the wounded man.                             
  In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above           
the high body of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow          
of another fire. One glow had long been visible and everybody knew          
that it was Little Mytishchi burning- set on fire by Mamonov's              
Cossacks.                                                                   
  "But look here, brothers, there's another fire!" remarked an              
orderly.                                                                    
                                                    {BK11|CH30 ^paragraph 5}
  All turned their attention to the glow.                                   
  "But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire by Mamonov's      
Cossacks."                                                                  
  "But that's not Mytishchi, it's farther away."                            
  "Look, it must be in Moscow!"                                             
  Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and           
sat down on its steps.                                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH30 ^paragraph 10}
  "It's more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over there, and          
this is right on the other side."                                           
  Several men joined the first two.                                         
  "See how it's flaring," said one. "That's a fire in Moscow: either        
in the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski quarter."                               
  No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed            
silently at the spreading flames of the second fire in the distance.        
  Old Daniel Terentich, the count's valet (as he was called), came          
up to the group and shouted at Mishka.                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH30 ^paragraph 15}
  "What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be      
calling and there's nobody there; go and gather the clothes together."      
  "I only ran out to get some water," said Mishka.                          
  "But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn't it look as if that      
glow were in Moscow?" remarked one of the footmen.                          
  Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long time they            
were all silent. The glow spread, rising and failing, farther and           
farther still.                                                              
  "God have mercy.... It's windy and dry..." said another voice.            
                                                   {BK11|CH30 ^paragraph 20}
  "Just look! See what it's doing now. O Lord! You can even see the         
crows flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!"                               
  "They'll put it out, no fear!"                                            
  "Who's to put it out?" Daniel Terentich, who had hitherto been            
silent, was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. "Moscow        
it is, brothers," said he. "Mother Moscow, the white..." his voice          
faltered, and he gave way to an old man's sob.                              
  And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the         
significance for them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were            
heard, words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count's old valet.           
                                                                            
BK11|CH31                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXI                                                              
-                                                                           
  The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that              
Moscow was burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to      
look. Sonya and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out          
with him. Only Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya         
was no longer with the family, he had gone on with his regiment             
which was making for Troitsa.                                               
  The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry.           
Natasha, pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the        
icons just where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to      
her father's words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of           
the adjutant, three houses off.                                             
  "Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the yard chilled and        
frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful      
glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to        
her cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.                         
  But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to        
her and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had            
been in this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sonya, to the      
surprise and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable          
reason found it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew's wound and      
of his being with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry        
with anyone as she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and begged to be         
forgiven and now, as if trying to atone for her fault, paid                 
unceasing attention to her cousin.                                          
  "Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said she.                  
                                                    {BK11|CH31 ^paragraph 5}
  "What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes, Moscow."                       
  And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her, she         
turned her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was         
evident that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her      
former attitude.                                                            
  "But you didn't see it!"                                                  
  "Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to be        
left in peace.                                                              
  Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither           
Moscow nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of            
importance to Natasha.                                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH31 ^paragraph 10}
  The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess        
went up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand      
as she was wont to do when Natasha was ill, then touched her                
forehead with her lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and          
finally kissed her.                                                         
  "You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better lie down,"        
said the countess.                                                          
  "Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once," said Natasha.       
  When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was            
seriously wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first      
asked many questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it        
serious? And could she see him? But after she had been told that she        
could not see him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was      
not in danger, she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all,              
evidently disbelieving what they told her, and convinced that say what      
she might she would still be told the same. All the way she had sat         
motionless in a corner of the coach with wide open eyes, and the            
expression in them which the countess knew so well and feared so much,      
and now she sat in the same way on the bench where she had seated           
herself on arriving. She was planning something and either deciding or      
had already decided something in her mind. The countess knew this, but      
what it might be she did not know, and this alarmed and tormented her.      
  "Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed."                          
                                                   {BK11|CH31 ^paragraph 15}
  A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame           
Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.            
  "No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied           
irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open        
window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She        
put her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her          
slim neck shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame.         
Natasha knew it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince      
Andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut          
across the passage; but this dreadful incessant moaning made her            
sob. The countess exchanged a look with Sonya.                              
  "Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the countess, softly          
touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie down."                             
  "Oh, yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha, and began               
hurriedly undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.                
  When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket,           
she sat down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made          
up on the floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the      
front, and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers           
rapidly unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved         
from side to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked         
fixedly before her. When her toilet for the night was finished she          
sank gently onto the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the      
door.                                                                       
                                                   {BK11|CH31 ^paragraph 20}
  "Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said Sonya.                    
  "I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down," she added              
crossly, and buried her face in the pillow.                                 
  The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay          
down. The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left          
in the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little      
Mytishchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise      
of people shouting at a tavern Mamonov's Cossacks had set up across         
the street, and the adjutant's unceasing moans could still be heard.        
  For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds that           
reached her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First        
she heard her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed        
under her, then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's         
gentle breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not      
answer.                                                                     
  "I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly.                         
                                                   {BK11|CH31 ^paragraph 25}
  After short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one         
replied.                                                                    
  Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing. Natasha        
did not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the        
quilt, was growing cold on the bare floor.                                  
  As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in         
a crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near         
by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of           
the adjutant was heard. Natasha sat up.                                     
  "Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered.                            
  No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed                
herself, and stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her        
slim, supple, bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping          
cautiously from one foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few         
steps to the door and grasped the cold door handle.                         
                                                   {BK11|CH31 ^paragraph 30}
  It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically            
against all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking            
with alarm and terror and overflowing with love.                            
  She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the         
cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed        
her. With her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over            
him, and opened the door into the part of the hut where Prince              
Andrew lay. It was dark in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench        
beside a bed on which something was lying, stood a tallow candle            
with a long, thick, and smoldering wick.                                    
  From the moment she had been told that of Prince Andrew's wound           
and his presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him. She did not        
know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt        
the more convinced that it was necessary.                                   
  All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now      
that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might        
see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that              
incessant moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that.      
In her imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When           
she saw an indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees            
raised under the quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body      
there, and stood still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her      
forward. She cautiously took one step and then another, and found           
herself in the middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man-      
Timokhin- was lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons,           
and two others- the doctor and a valet- lay on the floor.                   
  The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by         
the pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange      
apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and               
nightcap. The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What do you          
want? What's the matter?" made Natasha approach more swiftly to what        
was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked,         
she must see him. She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle      
wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the           
quilt, and such as she had always seen him.                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH31 ^paragraph 35}
  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.                                   
                                                                            
BK11|CH32                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXII                                                             
-                                                                           
  Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the            
ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the      
inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's        
opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with           
pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that        
his temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.      
The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had      
remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself           
asked to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his            
removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose                
consciousness. When he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a         
long time motionless with closed eyes. Then he opened them and              
whispered softly: "And the tea?" His remembering such a small detail        
of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse,      
and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He           
was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient did      
not die now, he would do so a little later with greater suffering.          
Timokhin, the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew's regiment, had              
joined him in Moscow and was being taken along with him, having been        
wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They were accompanied by      
a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his coach. man, and two orderlies.         
  They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking            
with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to              
understand and remember something.                                          
  "I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked.                      
  Timokhin crept along the bench to him.                                    
  "I am here, your excellency."                                             
                                                    {BK11|CH32 ^paragraph 5}
  "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?"                                                              
                                                   {BK11|CH32 ^paragraph 10}
  "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."         
                                                   {BK11|CH32 ^paragraph 15}
  "By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under           
him!" said the valet.                                                       
  The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was         
the matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he        
asked to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at           
Mytishchi. After growing confused from pain while being carried into        
the hut he again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once        
more recalled all that had happened to him, and above all vividly           
remembered the moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of        
the sufferings of a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to         
him which promised him happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague      
and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he had         
now a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to      
do with the Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of them. The          
uncomfortable position in which they had put him and turned him over        
again confused his thoughts, and when he came to himself a third            
time it was in the complete stillness of the night. Everybody near him      
was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage; someone was        
shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the              
table, on the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the         
head of the bed and around the candle beside him, the wick of which         
was charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom.                          
  His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,      
feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the         
power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which        
to fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from        
the deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in         
and can then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's          
mind was not in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of           
his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted             
apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images occupied him          
simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly began to work with a            
vigor, clearness, and depth it had never reached when he was in             
health, but suddenly in the midst of its work it would turn to some         
unexpected idea and he had not the strength to turn it back again.          
  "Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be           
deprived," he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut,      
gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness        
lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act      
on man- a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving.             
Every man can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was           
possible only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was         
the Son...?"                                                                
  And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince         
Andrew heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality)         
a soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating              
"piti-piti-piti," and then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti,"         
and "ti-ti" once more. At the same time he felt that above his face,        
above the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being          
erected out of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this           
whispered music. He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it        
was difficult) so that this airy structure should not collapse; but         
nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound        
of whispered rhythmic music- "it stretches, stretches, spreading out        
and stretching," said Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to          
this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out and           
the construction of this edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a      
red halo round the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and      
the buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his face.        
Each time the fly touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and      
yet to his surprise it did not destroy the structure, though it             
knocked against the very region of his face where it was rising. But        
besides this there was something else of importance. It was                 
something white by the door- the statue of a sphinx, which also             
oppressed him.                                                              
                                                   {BK11|CH32 ^paragraph 20}
  "But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought, "and              
that's my legs, and that is the door, but why is it always                  
stretching and drawing itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti'         
and 'piti-piti-piti'...? That's enough, please leave off!" Prince           
Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings      
again swam to the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and           
force.                                                                      
  "Yes- love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which          
loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some        
reason, but the love which I- while dying- first experienced when I         
saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love          
which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an               
object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to            
love one's enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His              
manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with             
human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why      
I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has          
become of him? Is he alive?...                                              
  "When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but        
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can          
destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people         
have I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as         
I did her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he           
had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave him             
delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And          
he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now      
understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her,      
the cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were possible for          
me to see her once more! Just once, looking into those eyes to say..."      
-                                                                           
  "Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the           
fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a         
world of reality and delirium in which something particular was             
happening. In that world some structure was still being erected and         
did not fall, something was still stretching out, and the candle            
with its red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay      
near the door; but besides all this something creaked, there was a          
whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the        
door. And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very        
Natasha of whom he had just been thinking.                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH32 ^paragraph 25}
  "Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince           
Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face        
remained before him with the force of reality and drew nearer.              
Prince Andrew wished to return that former world of pure thought,           
but he could not, and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft      
whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed         
him and stretched out, and the strange face was before him. Prince          
Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his               
senses, he moved a little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his          
ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water he lost      
consciousness. When he came to himself, Natasha, that same living           
Natasha whom of all people he most longed to love with this new pure        
divine love that had been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He      
realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was not surprised      
but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her knees (she was unable to      
stir), with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining her             
sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it             
something quivered.                                                         
  Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.          
  "You?" he said. "How fortunate!"                                          
  With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on           
her knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and         
began kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.                   
  "Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.        
"Forgive me!"                                                               
                                                   {BK11|CH32 ^paragraph 30}
  "I love you," said Prince Andrew.                                         
  "Forgive...!"                                                             
  "Forgive what?" he asked.                                                 
  "Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a                
scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more           
rapidly, just touching it with her lips.                                    
  "I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew, lifting        
her face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.                         
                                                   {BK11|CH32 ^paragraph 35}
  Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,                
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face,            
with its swollen lips, was more than plain- it was dreadful. But            
Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were          
beautiful. They heard the sound of voices behind them.                      
  Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.           
Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had      
long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his            
bare body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.                     
  "What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed. "Please go           
away, madam!"                                                               
  At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her           
daughter's absence, knocked at the door.                                    
  Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the        
room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.                    
                                                   {BK11|CH32 ^paragraph 40}
-                                                                           
  From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at           
every halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never          
left the wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had         
not expected from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in        
nursing a wounded man.                                                      
  Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew        
die in her daughter's arms during the journey- as, judging by what the      
doctor said, it seemed might easily happen- she could not oppose            
Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between the               
wounded man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover         
their former engagement would be renewed, no one- least of all Natasha      
and Prince Andrew- spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and        
death, which hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut         
out all other considerations.                                               
                                                                            
BK11|CH33                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXIII                                                            
-                                                                           
  On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching,         
the clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt                   
uncomfortable on his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of          
something shameful he had done the day before. That something shameful      
was his yesterday's conversation with Captain Ramballe.                     
  It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of          
doors. Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an          
engraved stock which Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, he          
remembered where he was and what lay before him that very day.              
  "Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't make his          
entry into Moscow before noon."                                             
  Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him,           
but hastened to act.                                                        
  After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to          
go out. But it then occurred to him for the first time that he              
certainly could not carry the weapon in his hand through the                
streets. It was difficult to hide such a big pistol even under his          
wide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his         
arm. Besides, it had been discharged, and he had not had time to            
reload it. "No matter, dagger will do," he said to himself, though          
when planning his design he had more than once come to the                  
conclusion that the chief mistake made by the student in 1809 had been      
to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as his chief aim                 
consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving to himself         
that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he could          
to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a             
green sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the            
pistol, and hid it under his waistcoat.                                     
                                                    {BK11|CH33 ^paragraph 5}
  Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his          
head, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or      
meeting the captain, and passed out into the street.                        
  The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much                    
indifference the evening before, had greatly increased during the           
night. Moscow was on fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage      
Row, across the river, in the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as the      
barges on the Moskva River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov          
Bridge, were all ablaze.                                                    
  Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and from           
there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had long         
before decided that the deed should should be done. The gates of            
most of the houses were locked and the shutters up. The streets and         
lanes were deserted. The air was full of smoke and the smell of             
burning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and timid faces,         
and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walking          
in the middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the French              
looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his height and stoutness,           
and the strange morose look of suffering in his face and whole figure,      
the Russians stared at Pierre because they could not make out to            
what class he could belong. The French followed him with                    
astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the           
other Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid        
no attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who         
were explaining something to some Russians who did not understand           
them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.                      
  Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel      
standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the           
shout was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man's        
musket as he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on         
the other side of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what      
went on around him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror      
and haste, like something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the         
previous night's experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was         
not destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even had      
he not been hindered by anything on the way, his intention could not        
now have been carried out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than      
four hours previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the         
Kremlin, and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal      
study in the Kremlin, giving detailed and exact orders as to                
measures to be taken immediately to extinguish the fire, to prevent         
looting, and to reassure the inhabitants. But Pierre did not know           
this; he was entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and was              
tortured- as those are who obstinately undertake a task that is             
impossible for them not because of its difficulty but because of its        
incompatibility with their natures- by the fear of weakening at the         
decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.                              
  Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by            
instinct and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the           
Povarskoy.                                                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH33 ^paragraph 10}
  As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser-      
he even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame      
rose from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the          
streets and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that         
something unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he         
was approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across a        
wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens of      
Prince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the            
desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if                 
awakening from a dream and lifted his head.                                 
  By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of             
household goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and           
trunks. On the ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer        
young, with long, prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and      
cap. This woman, swaying to and fro and muttering something, was            
choking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty      
short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother with a look of        
stupefaction on their pale frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy      
of about seven, who wore an overcoat and an immense cap evidently           
not his own, was crying in his old nurse's arms. A dirty, barefooted        
maid was sitting on a trunk, and, having undone her pale-colored            
plait, was pulling it straight and sniffing at her singed hair. The         
woman's husband, a short, round-shouldered man in the undress               
uniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers and            
showing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forward          
over his temples, with expressionless face was moving the trunks,           
which were placed one on another, and was dragging some garments            
from under them.                                                            
  As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his          
feet.                                                                       
  "Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends...          
help us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... My           
daughter! My youngest daughter is left behind. She's burned! Ooh!           
Was it for this I nursed you.... Ooh!"                                      
  "Don't, Mary Nikolievna!" said her husband to her in a low voice,         
evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. "Sister must         
have taken her, or else where can she be?" he added.                        
                                                   {BK11|CH33 ^paragraph 15}
  "Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to        
weep. "You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Another        
man would have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and         
neither a man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," she         
went on, addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire broke        
out alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and we         
rushed to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is        
what we have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the          
rest is lost. We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O                 
Lord!..." and again she began to sob. "My child, my dear one!               
Burned, burned!"                                                            
  "But where was she left?" asked Pierre.                                   
  From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man      
might help her.                                                             
  "Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "My                   
benefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, show      
him the way!" she cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and          
still farther exposing her long teeth.                                      
  "Show me the way, show me, I... I'll do it," gasped Pierre rapidly.       
                                                   {BK11|CH33 ^paragraph 20}
  The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her           
plait, sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre      
felt as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his        
head higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift          
steps he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the               
Povarskoy. The whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues      
of flame here and there broke through that cloud. A great number of         
people crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of the          
street stood a French general saying something to those around him.         
Pierre, accompanied by the maid, was advancing to the spot where the        
general stood, but the French soldiers stopped him.                         
  "On ne passe pas!"* cried a voice.                                        
-                                                                           
  *"You can't pass!                                                         
-                                                                           
                                                   {BK11|CH33 ^paragraph 25}
  "This way, uncle," cried the girl. "We'll pass through the side           
street, by the Nikulins'!"                                                  
  Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with          
her. She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left,      
and, passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right.                 
  "It's here, close by," said she and, running across the yard, opened      
a gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small          
wooden wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One      
of its sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames          
issued from the openings of the windows and from under the roof.            
  As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air      
and involuntarily stopped.                                                  
  "Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked.                             
                                                   {BK11|CH33 ^paragraph 30}
  "Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it, that was        
our lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my                
precious little missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight of           
the fire felt that she too must give expression to her feelings.            
  Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he              
involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house         
that was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and           
around which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not          
realize what these men, who were dragging something out, were about;        
but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber      
and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that      
looting was going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.       
  The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings,        
the whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the               
people, and the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick        
black clouds and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here           
and there dense sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish          
scales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke and                
rapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effects          
of a conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him because        
at the sight of the fire he felt himself suddenly freed from the ideas      
that had weighed him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and               
resolute. He ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about to      
dash into that part of it which was still standing, when just above         
his head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking sound         
and the ring of something heavy falling close beside him.                   
  Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some              
Frenchmen who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with        
metal articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the         
drawer.                                                                     
  "What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to            
Pierre.                                                                     
                                                   {BK11|CH33 ^paragraph 35}
  "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."             
                                                   {BK11|CH33 ^paragraph 40}
  And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with         
a spot on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window      
on the ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with           
him into the garden.                                                        
  "Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades. "It's getting      
hot."                                                                       
  When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman            
pulled Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space             
where a three-year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.         
  "There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!" said the           
Frenchman. "Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you         
know!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his         
comrades.                                                                   
  Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going          
to take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly,                  
scrofulous-looking child, unattractively like her mother, began to          
yell and run away. Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his        
arms. She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her little        
hands to pull Pierre's hands away and to bite them with her slobbering      
mouth. Pierre was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he      
had experienced when touching some nasty little animal. But he made an      
effort not to throw the child down and ran with her to the large            
house. It was now, however, impossible to get back the way he had           
come; the maid, Aniska, was no longer there, and Pierre with a feeling      
of pity and disgust pressed the wet, painfully sobbing child to             
himself as tenderly as he could and ran with her through the garden         
seeking another way out.                                                    
                                                                            
BK11|CH34                                                                   
  CHAPTER XXXIV                                                             
-                                                                           
  Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back      
with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the         
Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had        
set out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and        
goods that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian              
families who had taken refuge here from the fire with their                 
belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of              
clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family      
of that civil servant in order to restore the daughter to her mother        
and go to save someone else. Pierre felt that he had still much to          
do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he            
felt at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of youth,             
animation, and determination that had come on him when he ran to            
save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her little      
hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some           
little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight            
smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that            
frightened, sickly little face.                                             
  He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left           
them. He walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various      
faces he met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family        
consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new,      
cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar        
type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the         
perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched,           
black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long,      
beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the         
crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright         
lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown           
out onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the      
old woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless,           
large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she           
was aware of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck          
Pierre and, hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to         
look at her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding           
those he sought, he stopped and looked about him.                           
  With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous            
than before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered          
about him.                                                                  
  "Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry               
yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him.                   
  Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat         
who had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked            
whether anyone knew where she had gone.                                     
                                                    {BK11|CH34 ^paragraph 5}
  "Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon, addressing a        
pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!" he added      
in his customary bass.                                                      
  "The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the morning.            
That must be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!"                     
  "He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a house      
serf.                                                                       
  "Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre.              
  "That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these           
wolves swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.      
                                                   {BK11|CH34 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.                                
                                                   {BK11|CH34 ^paragraph 15}
  The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same               
attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or            
feel what the soldier was doing to her.                                     
  While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the        
Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing         
from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the          
young woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.                    
  "Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious            
voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him          
aside.                                                                      
  The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing         
down the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward            
Pierre.                                                                     
  "Voyons, Pas de betises!"* he cried.                                      
                                                   {BK11|CH34 ^paragraph 20}
-                                                                           
  *"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.                                                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH34 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                                 
                                                   {BK11|CH34 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                                                  
                                                   {BK11|CH34 ^paragraph 35}
  "Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she. "And the         
little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not         
theirs?" said the woman.                                                    
  "What does that woman want?" asked the officer.                           
  Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight          
of the little girl he had saved.                                            
  "What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my daughter        
whom I have just saved from the flames," said he. "Good-by!" And            
without knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along         
with resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.             
  The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various           
streets of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage,         
and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general      
opinion which had that day originated among the higher French               
officers, were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through      
a number of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects:         
a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house           
serf, besides several looters. But of all these various suspected           
characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all.         
When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the        
Zubov Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed        
apart under strict guard.                                                   
                                                                            
BK12                                                                        
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                               BOOK TWELVE: 1812                            
                                                                            
BK12|CH1                                                                    
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being               
carried on with greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between      
the parties of Rumyantsev, the French, Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich,      
and others, drowned as usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But        
the calm, luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about                
phantoms and reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made      
it hard, except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the            
difficult position of the Russian people. There were the same               
receptions and balls, the same French theater, the same court               
interests and service interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the         
very highest circles were attempts made to keep in mind the                 
difficulties of the actual position. Stories were whispered of how          
differently the two Empresses behaved in these difficult                    
circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned for the welfare of the          
charitable and educational institutions under her patronage, had given      
directions that they should all be removed to Kazan, and the things         
belonging to these institutions had already been packed up. The             
Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions she would          
be pleased to give- with her characteristic Russian patriotism had          
replied that she could give no directions about state institutions for      
that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally was      
concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.                         
  At Anna Pavlovna's on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of         
the battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which      
was to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when         
sending the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was                
regarded as a model of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince          
Vasili himself, famed for his elocution, was to read it. (He used to        
read at the Empress'.) The art of his reading was supposed to lie in        
rolling out the words, quite independently of their meaning, in a loud      
and singsong voice alternating between a despairing wail and a              
tender murmur, so that the wail fell quite at random on one word and        
the murmur on another. This reading, as was always the case at Anna         
Pavlovna's soirees, had a political significance. That evening she          
expected several important personages who had to be made ashamed of         
their visits to the French theater and aroused to a patriotic               
temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna Pavlovna, not      
yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room, did not           
let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general                 
conversation.                                                               
  The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess             
Bezukhova. She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously,           
had missed several gatherings of which she was usually ornament, and        
was said to be receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated              
Petersburg doctors who usually attended her had entrusted herself to        
some Italian doctor who was treating her in some new and unusual way.       
  They all knew very well that the enchanting countess' illness             
arose from an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at         
the same time, and that the Italian's cure consisted in removing            
such inconvenience; but in Anna Pavlovna's presence no one dared to         
think of this or even appear to know it.                                    
  "They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is            
angina pectoris."                                                           
                                                     {BK12|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  "Angina? Oh, that's a terrible illness!"                                  
  "They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina..."        
and the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction.                   
  "The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the          
doctor told him the case was dangerous."                                    
  "Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman."            
  "You are speaking of the poor countess?" said Anna Pavlovna,              
coming up just then. "I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a        
little better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the          
world," she went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. "We belong to      
different camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she          
deserves. She is very unfortunate!" added Anna Pavlovna.                    
                                                    {BK12|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was somewhat lifting the      
veil from the secret of the countess' malady, an unwary young man           
ventured to express surprise that well known doctors had not been           
called in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan           
who might employ dangerous remedies.                                        
  "Your information maybe better than mine," Anna Pavlovna suddenly         
and venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, "but I know on      
good authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He          
is private physician to the Queen of Spain."                                
  And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pavlovna turned to         
another group where Bilibin was talking about the Austrians: having         
wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again      
and utter one of his mots.                                                  
  "I think it is delightful," he said, referring to a diplomatic            
note that had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners                
captured from the French by Wittgenstein, "the hero of Petropol" as he      
was then called in Petersburg.                                              
  "What? What's that?" asked Anna Pavlovna, securing silence for the        
mot, which she had heard before.                                            
                                                    {BK12|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch,         
which he had himself composed.                                              
  "The Emperor returns these Austrian banners," said Bilibin,               
"friendly banners gone astray and found on a wrong path," and his brow      
became smooth again.                                                        
  "Charming, charming!" observed Prince Vasili.                             
  "The path to Warsaw, perhaps," Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly           
and unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he            
meant. Prince Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise.        
He knew no more than the others what his words meant. During his            
diplomatic career he had more than once noticed that such utterances        
were received as very witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in         
that way the first words that entered his head. "It may turn out            
very well," he thought, "but if not, they'll know how to arrange            
matters." And really, during the awkward silence that ensued, that          
insufficiently patriotic person entered whom Anna Pavlovna had been         
waiting for and wished to convert, and she, smiling and shaking a           
finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince Vasili to the table and bringing        
him two candles and the manuscript begged him to begin. Everyone            
became silent.                                                              
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK12|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  "Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor! " Prince Vasili sternly             
declaimed, looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether           
anyone had anything to say to the contrary. But no one said                 
anything. "Moscow, our ancient capital, the New Jerusalem, receives         
her Christ"- he placed a sudden emphasis on the word her- "as a mother      
receives her zealous sons into her arms, and through the gathering          
mists, foreseeing the brilliant glory of thy rule, sings in                 
exultation, 'Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh!'"                          
-                                                                           
  Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.             
  Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present         
appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna         
Pavlovna whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman             
muttering the prayer at Communion: "Let the bold and insolent               
Goliath..." she whispered.                                                  
  Prince Vasili continued.                                                  
                                                    {BK12|CH1 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  "Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France             
encompass the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble           
Faith, the sling of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head        
in his blood-thirsty pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the         
servant of God and zealous champion of old of our country's weal, is        
offered to Your Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength          
prevents rejoicing in the sight of your most gracious presence. I           
raise fervent prayers to Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race        
of the just, and mercifully fulfill the desires of Your Majesty."           
-                                                                           
  "What force! What a style!" was uttered in approval both of reader        
and of author.                                                              
  Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna's guests talked for a long         
time of the state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as      
to the result of the battle to be fought in a few days.                     
                                                    {BK12|CH1 ^paragraph 30}
  "You will see," said Anna Pavlovna, "that tomorrow, on the Emperor's      
birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!"          
                                                                            
BK12|CH2                                                                    
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day              
during the service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor's           
birthday, Prince Volkonski was called out of the church and received a      
dispatch from Prince Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov's report, written from         
Tatarinova on the day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians        
had not retreated a step, that the French losses were much heavier          
than ours, and that he was writing in haste from the field of battle        
before collecting full information. It followed that there must have        
been a victory. And at once, without leaving the church, thanks were        
rendered to the Creator for His help and for the victory.                   
  Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was justified, and all that morning a        
joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the            
victory to have been complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon's            
having been captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new         
ruler for France.                                                           
  It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real             
strength and completeness amid the conditions of court life and far         
from the scene of action. General events involuntarily group                
themselves around some particular incident. So now the courtiers'           
pleasure was based as much on the fact that the news had arrived on         
the Emperor's birthday as on the fact of the victory itself. It was         
like a successfully arranged surprise. Mention was made in Kutuzov's        
report of the Russian losses, among which figured the names of              
Tuchkov, Bagration, and Kutaysov. In the Petersburg world this sad          
side of the affair again involuntarily centered round a single              
incident: Kutaysov's death. Everybody knew him, the Emperor liked him,      
and he was young and interesting. That day everyone met with the            
words:                                                                      
  "What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a        
loss Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!"                                          
  "What did I tell about Kutuzov?" Prince Vasili now said with a            
prophet's pride. "I always said he was the only man capable of              
defeating Napoleon."                                                        
                                                     {BK12|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood            
grew anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the           
suspense occasioned the Emperor.                                            
  "Fancy the Emperor's position!" said they, and instead of                 
extolling Kutuzov as they had done the day before, they condemned           
him as the cause of the Emperor's anxiety. That day Prince Vasili no        
longer boasted of his protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the         
commander in chief was mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if           
everything conspired to make Petersburg society anxious and uneasy,         
a terrible piece of news was added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had           
suddenly died of that terrible malady it had been so agreeable to           
mention. Officially, at large gatherings, everyone said that                
Countess Bezukhova had died of a terrible attack of angina pectoris,        
but in intimate circles details were mentioned of how the private           
physician of the Queen of Spain had prescribed small doses of a             
certain drug to produce a certain effect; but Helene, tortured by           
the fact that the old count suspected her and that her husband to whom      
she had written (that wretched, profligate Pierre) had not replied,         
had suddenly taken a very large dose of the drug, and had died in           
agony before assistance could be rendered her. It was said that Prince      
Vasili and the old count had turned upon the Italian, but the latter        
had produced such letters from the unfortunate deceased that they           
had immediately let the matter drop.                                        
  Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor's      
lack of news, the loss of Kutuzov, and the death of Helene.                 
  On the third day after Kutuzov's report a country gentleman               
arrived from Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French      
spread through the whole town. This was terrible! What a position           
for the Emperor to be in! Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili          
during the visits of condolence paid to him on the occasion of his          
daughter's death said of Kutuzov, whom he had formerly praised (it was      
excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had said), that it         
was impossible to expect anything else from a blind and depraved old        
man.                                                                        
  "I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted          
to such a man."                                                             
                                                    {BK12|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt         
it, but the next day the following communication was received from          
Count Rostopchin:                                                           
-                                                                           
  Prince Kutuzov's adjutant has brought me a letter in which he             
demands police officers to guide the army to the Ryazan road. He            
writes that he is regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov's            
action decides the fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will      
shudder to learn of the abandonment of the city in which her greatness      
is centered and in which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall           
follow the army. I have had everything removed, and it only remains         
for me to weep over the fate of my fatherland.                              
-                                                                           
  On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkonski to           
Kutuzov with the following rescript:                                        
                                                    {BK12|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have      
received no communication from you, yet on the first of September I         
received from the commander in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad      
news that you, with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You           
can yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your           
silence increases my astonishment. I am sending this by                     
Adjutant-General Prince Volkonski, to hear from you the situation of        
the army and the reasons that have induced you to take this melancholy      
decision.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK12|CH3                                                                    
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from               
Kutuzov reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that           
event. This messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know             
Russian, but who was quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d'ame,* as he      
said of himself.                                                            
-                                                                           
  *Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.                           
-                                                                           
  The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the           
palace on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before           
the campaign and who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as        
he wrote) when he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain*            
with the news of the burning of Moscow, dont les flammes eclairaient        
sa route.*[2]                                                               
                                                     {BK12|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  *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:               
                                                    {BK12|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  "Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?"                                  
  "Very sad, sire," replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh.         
"The abandonment of Moscow."                                                
  "Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?" asked        
the Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.                            
  Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov had entrusted          
to him, which was that it had been impossible to fight before               
Moscow, and that as the only remaining choice was between losing the        
army as well as Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal           
had to choose the latter.                                                   
  The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.                  
                                                    {BK12|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  "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?..."                                          
                                                    {BK12|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  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!"                          
                                                    {BK12|CH3 ^paragraph 25}
  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."        
                                                    {BK12|CH3 ^paragraph 30}
  Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly      
turned away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his           
eyes, and went to the further end of his study. Having stood there a        
few moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm below the        
elbow with a vigorous movement. The Emperor's mild and handsome face        
was flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.                 
  "Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we        
may recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I," said the             
Emperor, touching his breast. "We can no longer both reign together. I      
have learned to know him, and he will not deceive me any more...."          
  And the Emperor paused, with a frown.                                     
  When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm                  
resolution in the Emperor's eyes, Michaud- quoique etranger, russe          
de coeur et d'ame- at that solemn moment felt himself enraptured by         
all that he had heard (as he used afterwards to say), and gave              
expression to his own feelings and those of the Russian people whose        
representative he considered himself to be, in the following words:         
  "Sire!" said he, "Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory        
of the nation and the salvation of Europe!"                                 
                                                    {BK12|CH3 ^paragraph 35}
  With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him.                
                                                                            
BK12|CH4                                                                    
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine         
that when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were           
ficeing to distant provinces, and one levy after another was being          
raised for the defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the             
greatest to the least were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves,        
saving their fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and        
descriptions of that time without exception speak only of the               
self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and the heroism of      
the Russians. But it was not really so. It appears so to us because we      
see only the general historic interest of that time and do not see all      
the personal human interests that people had. Yet in reality those          
personal interests of the moment so much transcend the general              
interests that they always prevent the public interest from being felt      
or even noticed. Most of the people at that time paid no attention          
to the general progress of events but were guided only by their             
private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at        
that period were most useful.                                               
  Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to         
take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless         
members of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they           
did for the common good turned out to be useless and foolish- like          
Pierre's and Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and         
the lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded,      
and so on. Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing          
their feelings, who discussed Russia's position at the time                 
involuntarily introduced into their conversation either a shade of          
pretense and falsehood or useless condemnation and anger directed           
against people accused of actions no one could possibly be guilty           
of. In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit of        
the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only unconscious action      
bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never             
understands its significance. If he tries to realize it his efforts         
are fruitless.                                                              
  The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place        
in Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg         
and in the provinces at a distance from Moscow, ladies, and                 
gentlemen in militia uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital      
and talked of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which               
retired beyond Moscow there was little talk or thought of Moscow,           
and when they caught sight of its burned ruins no one swore to be           
avenged on the French, but they thought about their next pay, their         
next quarters, of Matreshka the vivandiere, and like matters.               
  As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostov took a          
close and prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so          
casually, without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked        
at what was going on in Russia without despair and without dismally         
racking his brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the        
state of Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to         
think about it, that Kutuzov and others were there for that purpose,        
but that he had heard that the regiments were to be made up to their        
full strength, that fighting would probably go on for a long time yet,      
and that things being so it was quite likely he might be in command of      
a regiment in a couple of years' time.                                      
  As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being      
sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without         
regret at being prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but        
with the greatest pleasure- which he did not conceal and which his          
comrades fully understood.                                                  
                                                     {BK12|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas received the           
necessary money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in            
advance, he set out with post horses for Voronezh.                          
  Only a man who has experienced it- that is, has passed some months        
continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war- can understand        
the delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by        
the army's foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When-      
free from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp- he saw         
villages with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country               
houses, fields where cattle were grazing, posthouses with                   
stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this        
for the first time. What for a long while specially surprised and           
delighted him were the women, young and healthy, without a dozen            
officers making up to each of them; women, too, who were pleased and        
flattered that a passing officer should joke with them.                     
  In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in            
Voronezh, ordered things he had long been deprived of in camp, and          
next day, very clean-shaven and in a full-dress uniform he had not          
worn for a long time, went to present himself to the authorities.           
  The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man           
who was evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He        
received Nicholas brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically        
military) and questioned him with an important air, as if                   
considering the general progress of affairs and approving and               
disapproving with full right to do so. Nicholas was in such good            
spirits that this merely amused him.                                        
  From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The           
governor was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated      
the stud farms at which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended          
to him a horse dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles out        
of town who had the best horses, and promised to assist him in every        
way.                                                                        
                                                    {BK12|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  "You are Count Ilya Rostov's son? My wife was a great friend of your      
mother's. We are at home on Thursdays- today is Thursday, so please         
come and see us quite informally," said the governor, taking leave          
of him.                                                                     
  Immediately on leaving the governor's, Nicholas hired post horses         
and, taking his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop          
to the landowner, fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything         
seemed to him pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay          
in Voronezh and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant             
state of mind, everything went well and easily.                             
  The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old                
cavalryman, a horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some             
century-old brandy and some old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery          
where he smoked, and who owned some splendid horses.                        
  In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six      
thousand rubles- to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts.          
After dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine,              
Nicholas- having exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was      
already on the friendliest terms- galloped back over abominable roads,      
in the brightest frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as      
to be in time for the governor's party.                                     
  When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented              
himself, Nicholas arrived at the governor's rather late, but with           
the phrase "better late than never" on his lips.                            
                                                    {BK12|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew      
that Catherine Petrovna would play valses and the ecossaise on the          
clavichord and that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come        
as to a ball.                                                               
  Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this         
difference, that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the         
arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow, and as in everything          
that went on in Russia at that time a special recklessness was              
noticeable, an "in for a penny, in for a pound- who cares?" spirit,         
and the inevitable small talk, instead of turning on the weather and        
mutual acquaintances, now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.         
  The society gathered together at the governor's was the best in           
Voronezh.                                                                   
  There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas' Moscow               
acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the          
cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured        
and well-bred Count Rostov. Among the men was an Italian prisoner,          
an officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence          
of that prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero. The         
Italian was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it seemed        
to him that everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he         
treated him cordially though with dignity and restraint.                    
  As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing              
around him a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the             
words "better late than never" and heard them repeated several times        
by others, people clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he      
felt at once that he had entered into his proper position in the            
province- that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant position,           
and intoxicatingly so after his long privations. At posting                 
stations, at inns, and in the landowner's snuggery, maidservants had        
been flattered by his notice, and here too at the governor's party          
there were (as it seemed to Nicholas) an inexhaustible number of            
pretty young women, married and unmarried, impatiently awaiting his         
notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from the first            
day, the people concerned themselves to get this fine young                 
daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these was the        
governor's wife herself, who welcomed Rostov as a near relative and         
called him "Nicholas."                                                      
                                                    {BK12|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the ecossaise, and        
dancing began in which Nicholas still further captivated the                
provincial society by his agility. His particularly free manner of          
dancing even surprised them all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised      
at the way he danced that evening. He had never danced like that in         
Moscow and would even have considered such a very free and easy manner      
improper and in bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to           
astonish them all by something unusual, something they would have to        
accept as the regular thing in the capital though new to them in the        
provinces.                                                                  
  All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and         
pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials.        
With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other           
men's wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's          
side and treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style,        
as if, without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and         
the lady would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem          
to share that conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostov. But      
the latter's good-natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even      
he involuntarily yielded to Nicholas' good humor. Toward the end of         
the evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and              
animated, the husband's became more and more melancholy and solemn, as      
though there were but a given amount of animation between them and          
as the wife's share increased the husband's diminished.                     
                                                                            
BK12|CH5                                                                    
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending             
closely over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments        
with a smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the                
position of his legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor      
of perfume, and admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines        
of his legs in their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the          
blonde lady that he wished to run away with a certain lady here in          
Voronezh.                                                                   
  "Which lady?"                                                             
  "A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes" (Nicholas looked at his         
partner) "are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure" (he glanced      
at her shoulders) "like Diana's...."                                        
  The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking      
about.                                                                      
  "Ah, Nikita Ivanych!" cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if          
wishing Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to tell him of           
his intention to elope with a blonde lady.                                  
                                                     {BK12|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor's               
good-natured wife came up with a look of disapproval.                       
  "Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas," said she,                   
pronouncing the name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna          
Ignatyevna was a very important person. "Come, Nicholas! You know           
you let me call you so?"                                                    
  "Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?"                                              
  "Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her niece how you        
rescued her... Can you guess?"                                              
  "I rescued such a lot of them!" said Nicholas.                            
                                                    {BK12|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  "Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in Voronezh with her        
aunt. Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?"                                     
  "Not a bit! Please don't, Aunt!"                                          
  "Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!"                     
  The governor's wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady          
with a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with         
the most important personages of the town. This was Malvintseva,            
Princess Mary's aunt on her mother's side, a rich, childless widow who      
always lived in Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was                
standing settling up for the game. She looked at him and, screwing          
up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who had won from      
her.                                                                        
  "Very pleased, mon cher," she then said, holding out her hand to          
Nicholas. "Pray come and see me."                                           
                                                    {BK12|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom           
Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas         
knew of Prince Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the      
important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation        
to come to see her.                                                         
  Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the           
mention of Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and            
even of fear, which he himself did not understand.                          
  When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas wished to return to the      
dancing, but the governor's little wife placed her plump hand on his        
sleeve and, saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to      
her sitting room, from which those who were there immediately withdrew      
so as not to be in her way.                                                 
  "Do you know, dear boy," began the governor's wife with a serious         
expression on her kind little face, "that really would be the match         
for you: would you like me to arrange it?"                                  
  "Whom do you mean, Aunt?" asked Nicholas.                                 
                                                    {BK12|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  "I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petrovna        
speaks of Lily, but I say, no- the princess! Do you want me to do           
it? I am sure your mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl      
she is, really! And she is not at all so plain, either."                    
  "Not at all," replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. "As            
befits a soldier, Aunt, I don't force myself on anyone or refuse            
anything," he said before he had time to consider what he was saying.       
  "Well then, remember, this is not a joke!"                                
  "Of course not!"                                                          
  "Yes, yes," the governor's wife said as if talking to herself. "But,      
my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other,         
the blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really...."                       
                                                    {BK12|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  "Oh no, we are good friends with him," said Nicholas in the               
simplicity of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so        
pleasant to himself might not be pleasant to someone else.                  
  "But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor's wife!"            
thought Nicholas suddenly at supper. "She will really begin to arrange      
a match... and Soyna...?" And on taking leave of the governor's             
wife, when she again smilingly said to him, "Well then, remember!"          
he drew her aside.                                                          
  "But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..."                                
  "What is it, my dear? Come, let's sit down here," said she.               
  Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate        
thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or        
his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he                
afterwards recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable            
frankness which had very important results for him, it seemed to            
him- as it seems to everyone in such cases- that it was merely some         
silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with      
other trifling events, had immense consequences for him and for all         
his family.                                                                 
                                                    {BK12|CH5 ^paragraph 30}
  "You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but         
the very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me."                    
  "Oh yes, I understand," said the governor's wife.                         
  "But Princess Bolkonskaya- that's another matter. I will tell you         
the truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to         
her; and then, after I met her under such circumstances- so strangely,      
the idea often occurred to me: 'This is fate.' Especially if you            
remember that Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never           
happened to meet her before, somehow it had always happened that we         
did not meet. And as long as my sister Natasha was engaged to her           
brother it was of course out of the question for me to think of             
marrying her. And it must needs happen that I should meet her just          
when Natasha's engagement had been broken off... and then                   
everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone and never           
will, only to you."                                                         
  The governor's wife pressed his elbow gratefully.                         
  "You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her,        
and will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-" said         
Nicholas incoherently and blushing.                                         
                                                    {BK12|CH5 ^paragraph 35}
  "My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sonya has nothing        
and you yourself say your Papa's affairs are in a very bad way. And         
what about your mother? It would kill her, that's one thing. And            
what sort of life would it be for Sonya- if she's a girl with a heart?      
Your mother in despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and         
Sonya ought to understand that."                                            
  Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments.       
  "All the same, Aunt, it is impossible," he rejoined with a sigh,          
after a short pause. "Besides, would the princess have me? And              
besides, she is now in mourning. How can one think of it!"                  
  "But you don't suppose I'm going to get you married at once? There        
is always a right way of doing things," replied the governor's wife.        
  "What a matchmaker you are, Aunt..." said Nicholas, kissing her           
plump little hand.                                                          
                                                                            
BK12|CH6                                                                    
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov, Princess Mary           
had found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince         
Andrew giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at        
Voronezh. That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her           
during her father's illness, since his death, and especially since her      
meeting with Rostov was smothered by arrangements for the journey,          
anxiety about her brother, settling in a new house, meeting new             
people, and attending to her nephew's education. She was sad. Now,          
after a month passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more          
deeply the loss of her father which was associated in her mind with         
the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and incessantly tortured by the        
thought of the dangers to which her brother, the only intimate              
person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was worried too about         
her nephew's education for which she had always felt herself                
incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace- a             
peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal           
dreams and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her         
and were related to her meeting with Rostov.                                
  The day after her party the governor's wife came to see                   
Malvintseva and, after discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked          
that though under present circumstances a formal betrothal was, of          
course, not to be thought of, all the same the young people might be        
brought together and could get to know one another. Malvintseva             
expressed approval, and the governor's wife began to speak of Rostov        
in Mary's presence, praising him and telling how he had blushed when        
Princess Mary's name was mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a         
painful rather than a joyful feeling- her mental tranquillity was           
destroyed, and desires, doubts, self-reproach, and hopes reawoke.           
  During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called, Princess Mary      
continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she            
decided not to come to the drawing room when he called to see her           
aunt- that it would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to         
receive visitors; then she thought this would be rude after what he         
had done for her; then it occurred to her that her aunt and the             
governor's wife had intentions concerning herself and Rostov- their         
looks and words at times seemed to confirm this supposition- then           
she told herself that only she, with her sinful nature, could think         
this of them: they could not forget that situated as she was, while         
still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking would be an insult to         
her and to her father's memory. Assuming that she did go down to see        
him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would say to her and what she      
would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed undeservedly cold        
and then to mean too much. More than anything she feared lest the           
confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as soon as she        
saw him.                                                                    
  But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing      
room that Count Rostov had called, the princess showed no confusion,        
only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new      
and radiant light.                                                          
  "You have met him, Aunt?" said she in a calm voice, unable herself        
to understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural.              
                                                     {BK12|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an        
instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then         
just as Nicholas turned to her she raised her head and met his look         
with shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she            
half rose with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate          
hand to him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time      
new deep womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in         
the drawing room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise.           
Herself a consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on      
meeting a man she wished to attract.                                        
  "Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has           
greatly improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what          
tact and grace!" thought Mademoiselle Bourienne.                            
  Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she          
would have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the           
change that had taken place in herself. From the moment she recognized      
that dear, loved face, a new life force took possession of her and          
compelled her to speak and act apart from her own will. From the            
time Rostov entered, her face became suddenly transformed. It was as        
if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern and the         
intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously            
seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in              
unexpected and striking beauty. For the first time all that pure,           
spiritual, inward travail through which she had lived appeared on           
the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction with herself,        
her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her meekness, love,           
and self-sacrifice- all this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her        
delicate smile, and in every trait of her gentle face.                      
  Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He      
felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better         
than, anyone he had met before, and above all better than himself.          
  Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of         
the war, and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow      
about it; they spoke of their last meeting- Nicholas trying to              
change the subject- they talked of the governor's kind wife, of             
Nicholas' relations, and of Princess Mary's.                                
                                                    {BK12|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as         
soon as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of             
Russia's misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was      
too near her heart and she neither could nor would speak lightly of         
him. Nicholas noticed this, as he noticed every shade of Princess           
Mary's character with an observation unusual to him, and everything         
confirmed his conviction that she was a quite unusual and                   
extraordinary being. Nicholas blushed and was confused when people          
spoke to him about the princess (as she did when he was mentioned) and      
even when he thought of her, but in her presence he felt quite at           
ease, and said not at all what he had prepared, but what, quite             
appropriately, occurred to him at the moment.                               
  When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is             
usual when there are children, turned to Prince Andrew's little son,        
caressing him and asking whether he would like to be an hussar. He          
took the boy on his knee, played with him, and looked round at              
Princess Mary. With a softened, happy, timid look she watched the           
boy she loved in the arms of the man she loved. Nicholas also               
noticed that look and, as if understanding it, flushed with pleasure        
and began to kiss the boy with good natured playfulness.                    
  As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society,         
and Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but      
all the same the governor's wife went on with her matchmaking, passing      
on to Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and          
vice versa, and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary.        
For this purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people at         
the bishop's house before Mass.                                             
  Though Rostov told the governeor's wife that he would not make any        
declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.                            
  As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that what            
everybody considered right was right, so now, after a short but             
sincere struggle between his effort to arrange his life by his own          
sense of justice, and in obedient submission to circumstances, he           
chose the latter and yielded to the power he felt irresistibly              
carrying him he knew not where. He knew that after his promise to           
Sonya it would be what he deemed base to declare his feelings to            
Princess Mary. And he knew that he would never act basely. But he also      
knew (or rather felt at the bottom of his heart) that by resigning          
himself now to the force of circumstances and to those who were             
guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing             
something very important- more important than anything he had ever          
done in his life.                                                           
                                                    {BK12|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on        
externally as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for        
him and he often thought about her. But he never thought about her          
as he had thought of all the young ladies without exception whom he         
had met in society, nor as he had for a long time, and at one time          
rapturously, thought about Sonya. He had pictured each of those             
young ladies as almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as         
a possible wife, adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions      
of married life: a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his      
wife's carriage, little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to            
her, and so on- and these pictures of the future had given him              
pleasure. But with Princess Mary, to whom they were trying to get           
him engaged, he could never picture anything of future married life.        
If he tried, his pictures seemed incongruous and false. It made him         
afraid.                                                                     
                                                                            
BK12|CH7                                                                    
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed      
and wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow         
reached Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having          
learned of her brother's wound only from the Gazette and having no          
definite news of him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her      
again himself) to set off in search of Prince Andrew.                       
  When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and the               
abandonment of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with despair, anger,           
the desire for vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but                  
everything in Voronezh suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and        
he experienced an indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The          
conversations he heard seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to      
judge all these affairs and felt that only in the regiment would            
everything again become clear to him. He made haste to finish buying        
the horses, and often became unreasonably angry with his servant and        
squadron quartermaster.                                                     
  A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which          
Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian             
victory. He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with        
military decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of      
subjects. When the service was over the governor's wife beckoned him        
to her.                                                                     
  "Have you seen the princess?" she asked, indicating with a                
movement of her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond           
the choir.                                                                  
  Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the          
profile he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude,            
timidity, and pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary,            
evidently engrossed by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last      
time before leaving the church.                                             
                                                     {BK12|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he        
had seen before, there was the same general expression of refined,          
inner, spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There      
was a pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had         
occurred before when she was present, Nicholas went up to her               
without waiting to be prompted by the governor's wife and not asking        
himself whether or not it was right and proper to address her here          
in church, and told her he had heard of her trouble and sympathized         
with his whole soul. As soon as she heard his voice a vivid glow            
kindled in her face, lighting up both her sorrow and her joy.               
  "There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess," said Rostov.         
"It is that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikolievich, were not            
living, it would have been at once announced in the Gazette, as he          
is a colonel."                                                              
  The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but          
cheered by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.                
  "And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound" (the Gazette         
said it was a shell) "either proving fatal at once or being very            
slight," continued Nicholas. "We must hope for the best, and I am           
sure..."                                                                    
  Princess Mary interrupted him.                                            
                                                    {BK12|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "Oh, that would be so dread..." she began and, prevented by               
agitation from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as              
graceful as everything she did in his presence and, looking up at           
him gratefully, went out, following her aunt.                               
  That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle        
some accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that             
business it was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to      
go to bed, and for a long time he paced up and down the room,               
reflecting on his life, a thing he rarely did.                              
  Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had         
met her in Smolensk province. His having encountered her in such            
exceptional circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned      
her to him as a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her.      
When he met her again in Voronezh the impression she made on him was        
not merely pleasing but powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the           
peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at this time. He was,              
however, preparing to go away and it had not entered his head to            
regret that he was thus depriving himself of chances of meeting her.        
But that day's encounter in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than           
was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined face,          
that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures, and especially           
the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features agitated           
him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear to see the        
expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not like         
Prince Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy           
and dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed        
the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an                  
irresistible attraction.                                                    
  "She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!" he said to himself.        
"Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?" And he           
involuntarily compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one         
and the abundance of it in the other- a spirituality he himself lacked      
and therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what would            
happen were he free. How he would propose to her and how she would          
become his wife. But no, he could not imagine that. He felt awed,           
and no clear picture presented itself to his mind. He had long ago          
pictured to himself a future with Sonya, and that was all clear and         
simple just because it had all been thought out and he knew all             
there was in Sonya, but it was impossible to picture a future with          
Princess Mary, because he did not understand her but simply loved her.      
  Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them,         
but to dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little             
frightening.                                                                
                                                    {BK12|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "How she prayed!" he thought. "It was plain that her whole soul           
was in her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains,           
and I am sure her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I      
want?" he suddenly thought. "What do I want? To be free, released from      
Sonya... She was right," he thought, remembering what the governor's        
wife had said: "Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sonya.          
Muddles, grief for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible      
muddles! Besides, I don't love her- not as I should. O, God! release        
me from this dreadful, inextricable position!" he suddenly began to         
pray. "Yes, prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not      
pray as Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn         
into sugar- and then run out into the yard to see whether it had            
done so. No, but I am not praying for trifles now," he thought as he        
put his pipe down in a corner, and folding his hands placed himself         
before the icon. Softened by memories of Princess Mary he began to          
pray as he had not done for a long time. Tears were in his eyes and in      
his throat when the door opened and Lavrushka came in with some             
papers.                                                                     
  "Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?" cried               
Nicholas, quickly changing his attitude.                                    
  "From the governor," said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice. "A courier         
has arrived and there's a letter for you."                                  
  "Well, all right, thanks. You can go!"                                    
  Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother           
and the other from Sonya. He recognized them by the handwriting and         
opened Sonya's first. He had read only a few lines when he turned pale      
and his eyes opened wide with fear and joy.                                 
                                                    {BK12|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  "No, it's not possible!" he cried aloud.                                  
  Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter      
and reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then         
again, and standing still in the middle of the room he raised his           
shoulders, stretching out his hands, with his mouth wide open and           
his eyes fixed. What he had just been praying for with confidence that      
God would hear him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much               
astonished as if it were something extraordinary and unexpected, and        
as if the very fact that it had happened so quickly proved that it had      
not come from God to whom he had prayed, but by some ordinary               
coincidence.                                                                
  This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary            
letter from Sonya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from        
which there had seemed no escape. She wrote that the last                   
unfortunate events- the loss of almost the whole of the Rostovs'            
Moscow property- and the countess' repeatedly expressed wish that           
Nicholas should marry Princess Bolkonskaya, together with his               
silence and coldness of late, had all combined to make her decide to        
release him from his promise and set him completely free.                   
-                                                                           
  It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of         
sorrow or discord in the family that has been so good to me (she            
wrote), and my love has no aim but the happiness of those I love;           
so, Nicholas, I beg you to consider yourself free, and to be assured        
that, in spite of everything, no one can love you more than does            
                                                    {BK12|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
                                                   Your Sonya               
-                                                                           
  Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from the               
countess, described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the         
fire, and the destruction of all their property. In this letter the         
countess also mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded            
traveling with them; his state was very critical, but the doctor            
said there was now more hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.           
  Next day Nicholas took his mother's letter and went to see                
Princess Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about what "Natasha           
nursing him" might mean, but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly        
became almost as intimate with the princess as if they were relations.      
  The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to              
Yaroslavl, and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.                
                                                                            
BK12|CH8                                                                    
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Sonya's letter written from Troitsa, which had come as an answer          
to Nicholas' prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting           
Nicholas married to an heiress occupied the old countess' mind more         
and more. She knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this                
happening, and Sonya's life in the countess' house had grown harder         
and harder, especially after they had received a letter from                
Nicholas telling of his meeting with Princess Mary in Bogucharovo. The      
countess let no occasion slip of making humiliating or cruel allusions      
to Sonya.                                                                   
  But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all          
that was going on, she called Sonya to her and, instead of reproaching      
and making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself      
and repay all that the family had done for her by breaking off her          
engagement with Nicholas.                                                   
  "I shall not be at peace till you promise me this."                       
  Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs            
that she would do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave          
no actual promise and could not bring herself to decide to do what was      
demanded of her. She must sacrifice herself for the family that had         
reared and brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sonya's      
habit. Her position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could      
she show her worth, and she was accustomed to this and loved doing it.      
But in all her former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily           
conscious that they raised her in her own esteem and in that of             
others, and so made her more worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more         
than anything in the world. But now they wanted her to sacrifice the        
very thing that constituted the whole reward for her self-sacrifice         
and the whole meaning of her life. And for the first time she felt          
bitterness against those who had been her benefactors only to               
torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of Natasha who had         
never experienced anything of this sort, had never needed to sacrifice      
herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for her and yet was           
beloved by everybody. And for the first time Sonya felt that out of         
her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling was beginning        
to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue, or religion.          
Under the influence of this feeling Sonya, whose life of dependence         
had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered the           
countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her and resolved      
to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in order to set him free but      
on the contrary at that meeting to bind him to her forever.                 
  The bustle and terror of the Rostovs' last days in Moscow stifled         
the gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya. She was glad to find              
escape from them in practical activity. But when she heard of Prince        
Andrew's presence in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and      
for Natasha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that      
God did not intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that         
Natasha loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never ceased to love         
him. She knew that being thrown together again under such terrible          
circumstances they would again fall in love with one another, and that      
Nicholas would then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would        
be within the prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror        
of what had happened during those last days and during the first            
days of their journey, this feeling that Providence was intervening in      
her personal affairs cheered Sonya.                                         
                                                     {BK12|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their journey for a      
whole day.                                                                  
  Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry,        
one of which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much        
better that day and Natasha was sitting with him. In the next room sat      
the count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was      
calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery.      
Sonya was there too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew        
and Natasha were talking about. She heard the sound of their voices         
through the door. That door opened and Natasha came out, looking            
excited. Not noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was          
drawing back the wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya         
and took her hand.                                                          
  "Natasha, what are you about? Come here!" said the countess.              
  Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and advised her to          
pray for aid to God and His saint.                                          
  As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend by the hand        
and went with her into the unoccupied room.                                 
                                                    {BK12|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "Sonya, will he live?" she asked. "Sonya, how happy I am, and how         
unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he        
lives! He cannot... because... because... of" and Natasha burst into        
tears.                                                                      
  "Yes! I knew it! Thank God!" murmured Sonya. "He will live."              
  Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter's fear and      
grief and by her own personal feelings which she shared with no one.        
Sobbing, she kissed and comforted Natasha. "If only he lives!" she          
thought. Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two           
friends went together to Prince Andrew's door. Natasha opened it            
cautiously and glanced into the room, Sonya standing beside her at the      
half-open door.                                                             
  Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale            
face was calm, his eyes closed, and they could see his regular              
breathing.                                                                  
  "O, Natasha!" Sonya suddenly almost screamed, catching her                
companion's arm and stepping back from the door.                            
                                                    {BK12|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "What? What is it?" asked Natasha.                                        
  "It's that, that..." said Sonya, with a white face and trembling          
lips.                                                                       
  Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to the window,         
not yet understanding what the latter was telling her.                      
  "You remember," said Sonya with a solemn and frightened                   
expression. "You remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at         
Otradnoe at Christmas? Do you remember what I saw?"                         
  "Yes, yes!" cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely              
recalling that Sonya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom        
she had seen lying down.                                                    
                                                    {BK12|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "You remember?" Sonya went on. "I saw it then and told everybody,         
you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed," said she, making a             
gesture with her hand and a lifted finger at each detail, "and that he      
had his eyes closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that        
his hands were folded," she concluded, convincing herself that the          
details she had just seen were exactly what she had seen in the             
mirror.                                                                     
  She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first             
thing that came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed        
to her now as real as any other recollection. She not only                  
remembered what she had then said- that he turned to look at her and        
smiled and was covered with something red- but was firmly convinced         
that she had then seen and said that he was covered with a pink             
quilt and that his eyes were closed.                                        
  "Yes, yes, it really was pink!" cried Natasha, who now thought she        
too remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most           
extraordinary and mysterious part of the prediction.                        
  "But what does it mean?" she added meditatively.                          
  "Oh, I don't know, it is all so strange," replied Sonya, clutching        
at her head.                                                                
                                                    {BK12|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha went to him,           
but Sonya, feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the           
window thinking about the strangeness of what had occurred.                 
-                                                                           
  They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and         
the countess was writing to her son.                                        
  "Sonya!" said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as           
her niece passed, "Sonya, won't you write to Nicholas?" She spoke in a      
soft, tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her           
spectacles Sonya read all that the countess meant to convey with these      
words. Those eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear          
of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in case of such           
refusal.                                                                    
  Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.        
                                                    {BK12|CH8 ^paragraph 30}
  "Yes, Mamma, I will write," said she.                                     
  Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred         
that day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen        
of her vision. Now that she knew that the renewal of Natasha's              
relations with Prince Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying           
Princess Mary, she was joyfully conscious of a return of that               
self-sacrificing spirit in which she was accustomed to live and             
loved to live. So with a joyful consciousness of performing a               
magnanimous deed- interrupted several times by the tears that dimmed        
her velvety black eyes- she wrote that touching letter the arrival          
of which had so amazed Nicholas.                                            
                                                                            
BK12|CH9                                                                    
  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.                                     
                                                     {BK12|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  "Put that down, that's bad... very bad," sternly remarked the             
general with the white mustache and red flushed face.                       
-                                                                           
  On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart.                
  Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a             
merchant's house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the            
streets Pierre felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the      
whole city. Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize        
the significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires          
with horror.                                                                
  He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and        
during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that        
all those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any      
day from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn         
from the soldiers. Evidently for them "the marshal" represented a very      
high and rather mysterious power.                                           
                                                    {BK12|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                             
                                                                            
BK12|CH10                                                                   
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  On the eighth of September an officer- a very important one               
judging by the respect the guards showed him- entered the coach             
house where the prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on           
the staff, was holding a paper in his hand, and called over all the         
Russians there, naming Pierre as "the man who does not give his name."      
Glancing indolently and indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered      
the officer in charge to have them decently dressed and tidied up           
before taking them to the marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers        
arrived and Pierre with thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field.      
It was a fine day, sunny after rain, and the air was unusually pure.        
The smoke did not hang low as on the day when Pierre had been taken         
from the guardhouse on the Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure      
air in columns. No flames were seen, but columns of smoke rose on           
all sides, and all Moscow as far as Pierre could see was one vast           
charred ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces with only stoves         
and chimney stacks still standing, and here and there the blackened         
walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not           
recognize districts he had known well. Here and there he could see          
churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not               
destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the            
belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin        
glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.         
These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the         
Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate          
this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to      
be seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when          
they saw the French.                                                        
  It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but          
in place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed,              
Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order        
had been established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the             
looks of the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and            
gaily, were escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the        
looks of an important French official in a carriage and pair driven by      
a soldier, whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of      
regimental music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt         
and realized it especially from the list of prisoners the French            
officer had read out when he came that morning. Pierre had been             
taken by one set of soldiers and led first to one and then to               
another place with dozens of other men, and it seemed that they             
might have forgotten him, or confused him with the others. But no: the      
answers he had given when questioned had come back to him in his            
designation as "the man who does not give his name," and under that         
appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were now leading         
him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces that he and        
all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted and that          
they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself to be        
an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose            
action he did not understand but which was working well.                    
  He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the            
Virgin's Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not           
far from the convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house, where            
Pierre had often been in other days, and which, as he learned from the      
talk of the soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of          
Eckmuhl (Davout).                                                           
  They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one.        
Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass             
gallery, an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a        
long low study at the door of which stood an adjutant.                      
  Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end      
of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently             
consulting a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without            
raising his eyes, he said in a low voice:                                   
                                                    {BK12|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  "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..."                   
                                                   {BK12|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  "He is a Russian spy," Davout interrupted, addressing another             
general who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.                   
  Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice         
Pierre rapidly began:                                                       
  "No, monseigneur," he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a        
duke. "No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia            
officer and have not quitted Moscow."                                       
  "Your name?" asked Davout.                                                
  "Bezukhov."                                                               
                                                   {BK12|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                                     
                                                   {BK12|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                                                                     
                                                   {BK12|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  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.                          
                                                   {BK12|CH10 ^paragraph 30}
  A system of some sort was killing him- Pierre- depriving him of           
life, of everything, annihilating him.                                      
                                                                            
BK12|CH11                                                                   
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  From Prince Shcherbatov's house the prisoners were led straight down      
the Virgin's Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen         
garden in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit        
had been dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large           
crowd stood in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and      
many of Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty- Germans, Italians,        
and Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of           
the post stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red              
epaulets and high boots and shakos.                                         
  The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according to the            
list (Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums            
suddenly began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre      
felt as if part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of        
thinking or understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only      
one wish- that the frightful thing that had to happen should happen         
quickly. Pierre looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized        
them.                                                                       
  The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was tall and           
thin, the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a flat nose. The             
third was a domestic serf, about forty-five years old, with grizzled        
hair and a plump, well-nourished body. The fourth was a peasant, a          
very handsome man with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes.           
The fifth was a factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen          
in a loose coat.                                                            
  Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them                  
separately or two at a time. "In couples," replied the officer in           
command in a calm voice. There was a stir in the ranks of the soldiers      
and it was evident that they were all hurrying- not as men hurry to do      
something they understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary        
but unpleasant and incomprehensible task.                                   
  A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of the row of      
prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian and in French.               
                                                    {BK12|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                   
                                                   {BK12|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                          
                                                   {BK12|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                        
                                                                            
BK12|CH12                                                                   
  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.                                                                        
                                                    {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  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:                                                                      
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  "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.         
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
  "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."                                   
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.             
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 25}
  "And have you been here long?" Pierre asked as he munched the last        
of the potato.                                                              
  "I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow."        
  "Why, are you a soldier then?"                                            
  "Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of            
fever. We weren't told anything. There were some twenty of us lying         
there. We had no idea, never guessed at all."                               
  "And do you feel sad here?" Pierre inquired.                              
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 30}
  "How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the surname is          
Karataev," he added, evidently wishing to make it easier for Pierre to      
address him. "They call me 'little falcon' in the regiment. How is one      
to help feeling sad? Moscow- she's the mother of cities. How can one        
see all this and not feel sad? But 'the maggot gnaws the cabbage,           
yet dies first'; that's what the old folks used to tell us," he             
added rapidly.                                                              
  "What? What did you say?" asked Pierre.                                   
  "Who? I?" said Karataev. "I say things happen not as we plan but          
as God judges," he replied, thinking that he was repeating what he had      
said before, and immediately continued:                                     
  "Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house? So you        
have abundance, then? And a housewife? And your old parents, are            
they still living?" he asked.                                               
  And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that a              
suppressed smile of kindliness puckered the soldier's lips as he put        
these questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had no parents,              
especially that he had no mother.                                           
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 35}
  "A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but there's none        
as dear as one's own mother!" said he. "Well, and have you little           
ones?" he went on asking.                                                   
  Again Pierre's negative answer seemed to distress him, and he             
hastened to add:                                                            
  "Never mind! You're young folks yet, and please God may still have        
some. The great thing is to live in harmony...."                            
  "But it's all the same now," Pierre could not help saying.                
  "Ah, my dear fellow!" rejoined Karataev, "never decline a prison          
or a beggar's sack!"                                                        
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 40}
  He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently                 
preparing to tell a long story.                                             
  "Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home," he began. "We         
had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and      
our house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing      
there were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so         
happened..."                                                                
  And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into             
someone's copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper,         
had been tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier.                    
  "Well, lad," and a smile changed the tone of his voice "we thought        
it was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been        
for my sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier. But he, my        
younger brother, had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a        
wife behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a      
soldier. I come home on leave and I'll tell you how it was, I look and      
see that they are living better than before. The yard full of               
cattle, the women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only        
Michael the youngest, at home. Father, he says, 'All my children are        
the same to me: it hurts the same whichever finger gets bitten. But if      
Platon hadn't been shaved for a soldier, Michael would have had to          
go.' called us all to him and, will you believe it, placed us in front      
of the icons. 'Michael,' he says, 'come here and bow down to his feet;      
and you, young woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also        
bow down before him! Do you understand?' he says. That's how it is,         
dear fellow. Fate looks for a head. But we are always judging, 'that's      
not well- that's not right!' Our luck is like water in a dragnet:           
you pull at it and it bulges, but when you've drawn it out it's empty!      
That's how it is."                                                          
  And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.                                 
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 45}
  After a short silence he rose.                                            
  "Well, I think you must be sleepy," said he, and began rapidly            
crossing himself and repeating:                                             
  "Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus      
Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ,            
have mercy on us and save us!" he concluded, then bowed to the ground,      
got up, sighed, and sat down again on his heap of straw. "That's the        
way. Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf," he      
muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.                         
  "What prayer was that you were saying?" asked Pierre.                     
  "Eh?" murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep. "What was I          
saying? I was praying. Don't you pray?"                                     
                                                   {BK12|CH12 ^paragraph 50}
  "Yes, I do," said Pierre. "But what was that you said: Frola and          
Lavra?"                                                                     
  "Well, of course," replied Platon quickly, "the horses' saints.           
One must pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now you've curled up         
and got warm, you daughter of a bitch!" said Karataev, touching the         
dog that lay at his feet, and again turning over he fell asleep             
immediately.                                                                
  Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance        
outside, and flames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but        
inside it was quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep,         
but lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular            
snoring of Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that the world            
that had been shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a           
new beauty and on new and unshakable foundations.                           
                                                                            
BK12|CH13                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were             
confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he           
remained for four weeks.                                                    
  When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures      
to him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in his mind a            
most vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything        
Russian, kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next               
morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of something round,         
was fully confirmed: Platon's whole figure- in a French overcoat            
girdled with a cord, a soldier's cap, and bast shoes- was round. His        
head was quite round, his back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms,        
which he held as if ever ready to embrace something, were rounded, his      
pleasant smile and his large, gentle brown eyes were also round.            
  Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of           
campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not             
himself know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his          
brilliantly white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken                
semicircles when he laughed- as he often did- were all sound and good,      
there was not a gray hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole        
body gave an impression of suppleness and especially of firmness and        
endurance.                                                                  
  His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of        
innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief      
peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It           
was evident that he never considered what he had said or was going          
to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation         
had an irresistible persuasiveness.                                         
  His physical strength and agility during the first days of his            
imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and          
sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: "Lord, lay          
me down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!" and every morning on         
getting up, he said: "I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake          
myself." And indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a          
stone, and he only had to shake himself, to be ready without a              
moment's delay for some work, just as children are ready to play            
directly they awake. He could do everything, not very well but not          
badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended boots. He was            
always busy, and only at night allowed himself conversation- of             
which he was fond- and songs. He did not sing like a trained singer         
who knows he is listened to, but like the birds, evidently giving vent      
to the sounds in the same way that one stretches oneself or walks           
about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always                   
high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at      
such times was very serious.                                                
                                                    {BK12|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he              
seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced upon him-                
everything military and alien to himself- and had returned to his           
former peasant habits.                                                      
  "A soldier on leave- a shirt outside breeches," he would say.             
  He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did        
not complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once         
during the whole of his army service. When he related anything it           
was generally some old and evidently precious memory of his                 
"Christian" life, as he called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of      
which his talk was full, were for the most part not the coarse and          
indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken           
without a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely           
suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom.                         
  He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a            
previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he         
talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with          
folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief        
charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events- sometimes      
just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them-            
assumed in Karataev's a character of solemn fitness. He liked to            
hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell of an evening          
(they were always the same), but most of all he liked to hear               
stories of real life. He would smile joyfully when listening to such        
stories, now and then putting in a word or asking a question to make        
the moral beauty of what he was told clear to himself. Karataev had no      
attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but           
loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in          
contact with, particularly with man- not any particular man, but those      
with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his comrades, the            
French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite      
of Karataev's affectionate tenderness for him (by which he                  
unconsciously gave Pierre's spiritual life its due) he would not            
have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to          
feel in the same way toward Karataev.                                       
  To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary         
soldier. They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha," chaffed him         
good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always            
remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable,              
rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and            
truth.                                                                      
                                                   {BK12|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he         
began to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.                 
  Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask           
him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a        
moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of         
his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred      
in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of         
it. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart        
from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation      
of an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he      
regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only        
as part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and          
actions flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as         
fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value          
or significance of any word or deed taken separately.                       
                                                                            
BK12|CH14                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the      
Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepared to go there, in spite of her      
aunt's efforts to dissuade her- and not merely to go herself but to         
take her nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy,                
possible or impossible, she did not ask and did not want to know: it        
was her duty not only herself to be near her brother who was perhaps        
dying, but to do everything possible to take his son to him, and so         
she prepared to set off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew          
himself, Princess Mary attributed to his being too weak to write or to      
his considering the long journey too hard and too dangerous for her         
and his son.                                                                
  In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were        
the huge family coach in which she had traveled to Voronezh, a              
semiopen trap, and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle           
Bourienne, little Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three              
maids, Tikhon, and a young footman and courier her aunt had sent to         
accompany her.                                                              
  The usual route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the           
roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk,           
Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not      
everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the            
French were said to have shown themselves was even dangerous.               
  During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne, Dessalles, and      
Princess Mary's servants were astonished at her energy and firmness of      
spirit. She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and        
no difficulties daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy,             
which infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl by           
the end of the second week.                                                 
  The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest of her        
life. Her love for Rostov no longer tormented or agitated her. It           
filled her whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she      
no longer struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced that      
she loved and was beloved, though she never said this definitely to         
herself in words. She had become convinced of it at her last interview      
with Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that her brother was            
with the Rostovs. Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the          
fact that Prince Andrew's relations with Natasha might, if he               
recovered, be renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he            
knew and thought of this.                                                   
                                                    {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  Yet in spite of that, his relation to her- considerate, delicate,         
and loving- not only remained unchanged, but it sometimes seemed to         
Princess Mary that he was even glad that the family connection between      
them allowed him to express his friendship more freely. She knew            
that she loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that        
she was beloved, and was happy in regard to it.                             
  But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not            
prevent her feeling grief for her brother with full force; on the           
contrary, that spiritual tranquility on the one side made it the            
more possible for her to give full play to her feeling for her              
brother. That feeling was so strong at the moment of leaving                
Voronezh that those who saw her off, as they looked at her careworn,        
despairing face, felt sure she would fall ill on the journey. But           
the very difficulties and preoccupations of the journey, which she          
took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from her grief and          
gave her strength.                                                          
  As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary thought only of           
the journey itself, forgetting its object. But as she approached            
Yaroslavl the thought of what might await her there- not after many         
days, but that very evening- again presented itself to her and her          
agitation increased to its utmost limit.                                    
  The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out where the         
Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in what condition Prince Andrew      
was, when he met the big coach just entering the town gates was             
appalled by the terrible pallor of the princess' face that looked           
out at him from the window.                                                 
  "I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostovs are            
staying at the merchant Bronnikov's house, in the Square not far            
from here, right above the Volga," said the courier.                        
                                                   {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  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."                                  
                                                   {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  What "still the same" might mean Princess Mary did not ask, but with      
an unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old Nicholas, who was sitting      
in front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her            
head and did not raise it again till the heavy coach, rumbling,             
shaking and swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as        
they were let down.                                                         
  The carriage door was opened. On the left there was water- a great        
river- and on the right a porch. There were people at the entrance:         
servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait of black hair, smiling as      
it seemed to Princess Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This           
was Sonya.) Princess Mary ran up the steps. "This way, this way!" said      
the girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess found            
herself in the hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came      
rapidly to meet her with a look of emotion. This was the countess. She      
embraced Princess Mary and kissed her.                                      
  "Mon enfant!" she muttered, "je vous aime et vous connais depuis          
longtemps."*                                                                
-                                                                           
  *"My child! I love you and have known you a long time."                   
                                                   {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
-                                                                           
 Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the           
countess and that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly          
knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in      
French in the same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and        
asked: "How is he?"                                                         
  "The doctor says that he is not in danger," said the countess, but        
as she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed      
a contradiction of her words.                                               
  "Where is he? Can I see him- can I?" asked the princess.                  
  "One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?" said        
the countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with             
Dessalles. "There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh,      
what a lovely boy!"                                                         
  The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sonya        
was talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the            
boy, and the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had            
changed very much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had        
been a brisk, cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful,      
bewildered person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually            
looked round as if asking everyone whether he was doing the right           
thing. After the destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out      
of his accustomed groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own        
significance and to feel that there was no longer a place for him in        
life.                                                                       
                                                   {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible,        
and her vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him      
they should be trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her         
nephew, the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt      
the necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things        
which she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it           
was hard for her she was not vexed with these people.                       
  "This is my niece," said the count, introducing Sonya- "You don't         
know her, Princess?"                                                        
  Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the hostile           
feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she          
felt oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so      
far from what was in her own heart.                                         
  "Where is he?" she asked again, addressing them all.                      
  "He is downstairs. Natasha is with him," answered Sonya, flushing.        
"We have sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess."                 
                                                   {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 30}
  Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary's eyes. She          
turned away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to            
him, when light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard          
at the door. The princess looked round and saw Natasha coming in,           
almost running- that Natasha whom she had liked so little at their          
meeting in Moscow long since.                                               
  But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha's face before she           
realized that here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a      
friend. She ran to meet her, embraced her, and began to cry on her          
shoulder.                                                                   
  As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew's bed,           
heard of Princess Mary's arrival, she softly left his room and              
hastened to her with those swift steps that had sounded buoyant to          
Princess Mary.                                                              
  There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into      
the drawing room- that of love- boundless love for him, for her, and        
for all that was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for      
others, and passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping           
them. It was plain that at that moment there was in Natasha's heart no      
thought of herself or of her own relations with Prince Andrew.              
  Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at         
the first glance at Natasha's face, and wept on her shoulder with           
sorrowful pleasure.                                                         
                                                   {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 35}
  "Come, come to him, Mary," said Natasha, leading her into the             
other room.                                                                 
  Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to              
Natasha. She felt that from her she would be able to understand and         
learn everything.                                                           
  "How..." she began her question but stopped short.                        
  She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words.           
Natasha's face eyes would eyes would have to tell her all more clearly      
and profoundly.                                                             
  Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to      
say all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous      
eyes which penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was             
impossible not to tell the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly,         
Natasha's lips twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and        
covering her face with her hands she burst into sobs.                       
                                                   {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 40}
  Princess Mary understood.                                                 
  But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust:       
  "But how is his wound? What is his general condition?"                    
  "You, you... will see," was all Natasha could say.                        
  They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had            
left off crying and were able to go to him with calm faces.                 
                                                   {BK12|CH14 ^paragraph 45}
  "How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse?          
When did this happen?" Princess Mary inquired.                              
  Natasha told her that at first there had been danger from his             
feverish condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had        
passed and the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger         
had also passed. When they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to         
fester (Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the            
doctor had said that the festering might take a normal course. Then         
fever set in, but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.       
  "But two days ago this suddenly happened," said Natasha,                  
struggling with her sobs. "I don't know why, but you will see what          
he is like."                                                                
  "Is he weaker? Thinner?" asked the princess.                              
  "No, it's not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too           
good, he cannot, cannot live, because..."                                   
                                                                            
BK12|CH15                                                                   
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  When Natasha opened Prince Andrew's door with a familiar movement         
and let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt      
the sobs in her throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself,           
and now tried to remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to      
look at him without tears.                                                  
  The princess understood what Natasha had meant by the words: "two         
days ago this suddenly happened." She understood those words to mean        
that he had suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness        
were signs of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she             
already saw in imagination Andrew's face as she remembered it in            
childhood, a gentle, mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely shown,      
and which therefore affected her very strongly. She was sure he             
would speak soft, tender words to her such as her father had uttered        
before his death, and that she would not be able to bear it and             
would burst into sobs in his presence. Yet sooner or later it had to        
be, and she went in. The sobs rose higher and higher in her throat          
as she more and more clearly distinguished his form and her                 
shortsighted eyes tried to make out his features, and then she saw his      
face and met his gaze.                                                      
  He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan,                  
surrounded by pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin,                   
translucently white hand he held a handkerchief, while with the             
other he stroked the delicate mustache he had grown, moving his             
fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them as they entered.                     
  On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary's pace              
suddenly slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She      
suddenly felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of           
his face and eyes.                                                          
  "But in what am I to blame?" she asked herself. And his cold,             
stern look replied: "Because you are alive and thinking of the living,      
while I..."                                                                 
                                                    {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  In the deep the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but            
inwards there was an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded        
his sister and Natasha.                                                     
  He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.          
  "How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?" said he in a         
voice as calm and aloof as his look.                                        
  Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such          
horror into Princess Mary's heart as the tone of his voice.                 
  "And have you brought little Nicholas?" he asked in the same slow,        
quiet manner and with an obvious effort to remember.                        
                                                   {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  "How are you now?" said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she      
was saying.                                                                 
  "That, my dear, you must ask the doctor," he replied, and again           
making an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips          
only (his words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts):                
  "Merci, chere amie, d'etre venue."*                                       
-                                                                           
  *"Thank you for coming, my dear."                                         
                                                   {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just          
perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She           
now understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words,      
his tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look             
could be felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world,      
terrible in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he          
understand anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to            
understand, not because he lacked the power to do so but because he         
understood something else- something the living did not and could           
not understand- and which wholly occupied his mind.                         
  "There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together," said         
he, breaking the silence and pointing to Natasha. "She looks after          
me all the time."                                                           
  Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such      
a thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say          
that, before her whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to        
live he could not have said those words in that offensively cold tone.      
If he had not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to          
pity her and how could he speak like that in her presence? The only         
explanation was that he was indifferent, because something else,            
much more important, had been revealed to him.                              
  The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke          
off.                                                                        
                                                   {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  "Mary came by way of Ryazan," said Natasha.                               
  Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and         
only after calling her so in his presence did Natasha notice it             
herself.                                                                    
  "Really?" he asked.                                                       
  "They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that..."         
  Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was      
making an effort to listen, but could not do so.                            
                                                   {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  "Yes, they say it's burned," he said. "It's a great pity," and he         
gazed straight before him, absently stroking his mustache with his          
fingers.                                                                    
  "And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?" Prince Andrew suddenly        
said, evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. "He wrote here         
that he took a great liking to you," he went on simply and calmly,          
evidently unable to understand all the complex significance his             
words had for living people. "If you liked him too, it would be a good      
thing for you to get married," he added rather more quickly, as if          
pleased at having found words he had long been seeking.                     
  Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her,            
except as a proof of how far away he now was from everything living.        
  "Why talk of me?" she said quietly and glanced at Natasha.                
  Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were         
again silent.                                                               
                                                   {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.                                                               
                                                   {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 35}
  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?"                                                       
                                                   {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 40}
  "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.                                                                     
                                                   {BK12|CH15 ^paragraph 45}
-                                                                           
  Prince Andrew's little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and         
knew nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining          
knowledge, observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the        
faculties he afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or         
more profound understanding of the meaning of the scene he had              
witnessed between his father, Mary, and Natasha, than he had then.          
He understood it completely, and, leaving the room without crying,          
went silently up to Natasha who had come out with him and looked shyly      
at her with his beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy         
upper lip trembled and leaning his head against her he began to cry.        
  After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him         
and either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natasha        
of whom he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them           
quietly and shyly.                                                          
  When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood            
what Natasha's face had told her. She did not speak any more to             
Natasha of hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside         
his sofa, and did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in      
soul to that Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the             
dying man was now so evident.                                               
                                                                            
BK12|CH16                                                                   
  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!"                                            
                                                    {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious, he had seen        
her for whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her            
hand to his lips, had shed gentle, happy tears, love for a                  
particular woman again crept unobserved into his heart and once more        
bound him to life. And joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy        
his mind. Recalling the moment at the ambulance station when he had         
seen Kuragin, he could not now regain the feeling he then had, but was      
tormented by the question whether Kuragin was alive. And he dared           
not inquire.                                                                
  His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natasha          
referred to when she said: "This suddenly happened," had occurred           
two days before Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual            
struggle between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It      
was the unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life        
as presented to him in the form of his love for Natasha, and a last,        
though ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.          
  It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish,           
and his thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya was sitting by           
the table. He began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized         
him.                                                                        
  "Ah, she has come!" thought he.                                           
  And so it was: in Sonya's place sat Natasha who had just come in          
noiselessly.                                                                
                                                   {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced          
this physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an          
armchair placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from            
him, and was knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings         
since Prince Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick      
so well as old nurses who knit stockings, and that there is                 
something soothing in the knitting of stockings. The needles clicked        
lightly in her slender, rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see      
the thoughtful profile of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball        
rolled off her knees. She started, glanced round at him, and screening      
the candle with her hand stooped carefully with a supple and exact          
movement, picked up the ball, and regained her former position.             
  He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a         
deep breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed        
cautiously.                                                                 
  At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had          
told her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound           
which had brought them together again, but after that they never spoke      
of the future.                                                              
  "Can it or can it not be?" he now thought as he looked at her and         
listened to the light click of the steel needles. "Can fate have            
brought me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible        
that the truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that         
I have spent my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in           
the world! But what am I to do if I love her?" he thought, and he           
involuntarily groaned, from a habit acquired during his sufferings.         
  On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking, leaned nearer        
to him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to      
him and bent over him.                                                      
                                                   {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  "You are not asleep?"                                                     
  "No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in.          
No one else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do...         
that light. I want to weep for joy."                                        
  Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.            
  "Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world."          
  "And I!"- She turned away for an instant. "Why too much?" she asked.      
                                                   {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your             
soul, your whole soul- shall I live? What do you think?"                    
  "I am sure of it, sure!" Natasha almost shouted, taking hold of both      
his hands with a passionate movement.                                       
  He remained silent awhile.                                                
  "How good it would be!" and taking her hand he kissed it.                 
  Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this         
would not do and that he had to be quiet.                                   
                                                   {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  "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.                                         
                                                   {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 30}
  "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.              
                                                   {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 35}
  When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan,               
Natasha went up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer        
and looked at her strangely, not understanding.                             
  That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary's         
arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting             
fever assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did           
not interest Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her      
were more convincing.                                                       
  From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew                
together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration        
of life it did not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep          
compared to the duration of a dream.                                        
  There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow          
awakening.                                                                  
  His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both        
Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt this. They           
did not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves          
felt that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he        
had left them) but on what reminded them most closely of him- his           
body. Both felt this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of      
death did not affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment      
their grief. Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep,           
nor did they ever talk to one another about him. They felt that they        
could not express in words what they understood.                            
                                                   {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 40}
  They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and          
deeper, away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so           
and that it was right.                                                      
  He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of      
him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the           
boy's and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess        
Mary and Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was      
all that was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy,      
he did what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there        
was anything else he should do.                                             
  When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving,      
occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were present.                           
  "Is it over?" said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes      
lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natasha went up, looked          
at the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but           
did not kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of      
him- his body.                                                              
  "Where has he gone? Where is he now?..."                                  
                                                   {BK12|CH16 ^paragraph 45}
  When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table,          
everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.                       
  Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful               
perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from pity for Natasha and          
because he was no more. The old count cried because he felt that            
before long, he, too, must take the same terrible step.                     
  Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their         
own personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion         
which had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of           
the simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in        
their presence.                                                             
                                                                            
BK13                                                                        
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                              BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812                           
                                                                            
BK13|CH1                                                                    
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their                     
completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in           
man's soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of      
the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the         
cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to      
him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In historical events        
(where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first         
and most primitive approximation to present itself was the will of the      
gods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the most               
prominent position- the heroes of history. But we need only                 
penetrate to the essence of any historic event- which lies in the           
activity of the general mass of men who take part in it- to be              
convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the           
actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may            
seem to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the               
meaning of historical events this way or that; yet there is the same        
difference between a man who says that the people of the West moved on      
the East because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this            
happened because it had to happen, as there is between those who            
declared that the earth was stationary and that the planets moved           
round it and those who admitted that they did not know what upheld the      
earth, but knew there were laws directing its movement and that of the      
other planets. There is, and can be, no cause of an historical event        
except the one cause of all causes. But there are laws directing            
events, and some of these laws are known to us while we are                 
conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of these            
laws is only possible when possible when we have quite abandoned the        
attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man, just as the          
discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was possible only        
when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the earth.               
  The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the      
occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the          
most important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the           
Russian army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino        
camp- the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. They      
ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and        
dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians,               
including the French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders      
when they speak of that flank march. But it is hard to understand           
why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank        
march to be the profound conception of some one man who saved Russia        
and destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to understand         
where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much          
mental effort was needed to see that the best position for an army          
when it is not being attacked is where there are most provisions;           
and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best            
position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on           
the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning        
the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was a                
profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why          
they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and             
destroy the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded,             
accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might have proved          
ruinous to the Russians and salutary for the French. If the position        
of the Russian army really began to improve from the time of that           
march, it does not at all follow that the march was the cause of it.        
  That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to      
the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its          
destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If        
Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained      
inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle as        
Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French      
attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? What      
would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had                
attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when      
he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the              
French moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank      
march that brought salvation might have proved disastrous.                  
  The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying         
history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be           
attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in         
reality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself to           
anyone in its entirety, but resulted- moment by moment, step by             
step, event by event- from an endless number of most diverse                
circumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it had been            
accomplished and belonged to the past.                                      
  At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of the         
Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely,         
a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is the          
fact that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and         
above all there is the well-known conversation after the council,           
between the commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the        
commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief            
that the army supplies were for the most part stored along the Oka          
in the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni      
the army would be separated from its supplies by the broad river            
Oka, which cannot be crossed early in winter. This was the first            
indication of the necessity of deviating from what had previously           
seemed the most natural course- a direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod.        
The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer to      
its supplies. Subsequently the in activity of the French (who even          
lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenal      
at Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to its             
supplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Tula road.      
Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond the         
Pakhra, the Russian commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and had        
no thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable circumstances and      
the reappearance of French troops who had for a time lost touch with        
the Russians, and projects of giving battle, and above all the              
abundance of provisions in Kaluga province, obliged our army to turn        
still more to the south and to cross from the Tula to the Kaluga            
road and go to Tarutino, which was between the roads along which those      
supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to say when it was decided to        
abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say precisely when, or by whom,      
it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the army had got              
there, as the result of innumerable and varying forces, did people          
begin to assure themselves that they had desired this movement and          
long ago foreseen its result.                                               
                                                                            
BK13|CH2                                                                    
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the             
advance of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been          
continually retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated            
from that direct course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally      
drawn toward the district where supplies were abundant.                     
  If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading         
the Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could        
not have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow,            
describing an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be         
found and where the country was richest.                                    
  That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga             
roads was so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that          
direction, and demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take        
his army that way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a           
reprimand from the Emperor for having moved his army along the              
Ryazan road, and the Emperor's letter indicated to him the very             
position he had already occupied near Kaluga.                               
  Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by        
the whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army-         
when the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push           
was received- assumed the position natural to it.                           
  Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as          
it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood the                  
significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the             
meaning of the French army's inactivity, he alone continued to              
assert that the battle of Borodino had been a victory, he alone- who        
as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to               
attack- employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian army            
from useless engagements.                                                   
                                                     {BK13|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had      
left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and         
merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was           
heard to moan.                                                              
  The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed           
its calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's          
camp with overtures for peace.                                              
  Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head         
was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him,           
though they were meaningless.                                               
-                                                                           
  MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my                      
adjutants-general to discuss several interesting questions with you. I      
beg your Highness to credit what he says to you, especially when he         
expresses the sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long            
entertained for your person. This letter having no other object, I          
pray God, monsieur le Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and         
gracious protection!                                                        
                                                    {BK13|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
                                                  NAPOLEON                  
  MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812                                                  
-                                                                           
  Kutuzov replied: "I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on        
as the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present           
spirit of my nation." But he continued to exert all his powers to           
restrain his troops from attacking.                                         
  During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and      
the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had          
taken place in the relative strength of the two armies- both in spirit      
and in number- as a result of which the superiority had passed to           
the Russian side. Though the condition and numbers of the French            
army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the      
need of attacking at once showed itself by countless signs. These           
signs were: Lauriston's mission; the abundance of provisions at             
Tarutino; the reports coming in from all sides of the inactivity and        
disorder of the French; the flow of recruits to our regiments; the          
fine weather; the long rest the Russian soldiers had enjoyed, and           
the impatience to do what they had been assembled for, which usually        
shows itself in an army that has been resting; curiosity as to what         
the French army, so long lost sight of, was doing; the boldness with        
which our outposts now scouted close up to the French stationed at          
Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained by peasants and                 
guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this; the desire      
for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as the           
French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every         
soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed         
and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial         
change in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable.      
And at once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the           
minute hand has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an        
increased activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.            
                                                                            
BK13|CH3                                                                    
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his staff, and also by      
the Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of          
Moscow had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole        
campaign had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance.            
Though this plan had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow           
was still in our hands, it was approved by the staff and accepted as a      
basis for action. Kutuzov only replied that movements arranged from         
a distance were always difficult to execute. So fresh instructions          
were sent for the solution of difficulties that might be                    
encountered, as well as fresh people who were to watch Kutuzov's            
actions and report upon them.                                               
  Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now                 
reorganized. The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had been               
killed, and by Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be             
filled. Very serious consideration was given to the question whether        
it would be better to put A in B's place and B in D's, or on the            
contrary to put D in A's place, and so on- as if anything more than         
A's or B's satisfaction depended on this.                                   
  As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his           
Chief of Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the         
Emperor, and these transfers, a more than usually complicated play          
of parties was going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining      
B, D was undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and          
permutations. In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was            
generally the conduct of the war, which all these men believed they         
were directing; but this affair of the war went on independently of         
them, as it had to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but        
flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses. Only in           
the highest spheres did all these schemes, crossings, and                   
interminglings appear to be a true reflection of what had to happen.        
-                                                                           
  Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of          
October in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the battle at Tarutino)      
Since September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last      
reports were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not         
only has no action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of        
the ancient capital, but according to your last report you have even        
retreated farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy                
detachment and Tula with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the         
army, is in danger. From General Wintzingerode's reports, I see that        
an enemy corps of ten thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road.        
Another corps of several thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third         
has advanced along the Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather                  
considerable detachment is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaysk.             
Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the twenty-fifth. In view of      
all this information, when the enemy has scattered his forces in large      
detachments, and with Napoleon and his Guards in Moscow, is it              
possible that the enemy's forces confronting you are so considerable        
as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the contrary, he is        
probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with an army             
corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem             
that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might                   
advantageously attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least          
oblige him to retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the      
provinces now occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger            
from Tula and other towns in the interior. You will be responsible          
if the enemy is able to direct a force of any size against                  
Petersburg to threaten this capital in which it has not been                
possible to retain many troops; for with the army entrusted to you,         
and acting with resolution and energy, you have ample means to avert        
this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still to answer to our          
offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have experienced my            
readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken in me, but I        
and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal, firmness, and      
success which your intellect, military talent, and the courage of           
the troops you command justify us in expecting.                             
                                                     {BK13|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation          
of the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was               
dispatched, Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain         
the army he commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place.          
  On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out               
scouting, killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded        
hare he made his way far into the forest and came upon the left             
flank of Murat's army, encamped there without any precautions. The          
Cossack laughingly told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the      
hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story, informed his              
commander.                                                                  
  The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished      
to take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of         
the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities,      
reported the incident to a general on the staff.  The state of              
things on the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had      
been to see Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to        
use his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to take         
the offensive.                                                              
  "If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you           
are asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure        
to do the opposite," replied Bennigsen.                                     
                                                    {BK13|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  The Cossack's report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent            
out, was the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled        
spring was released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to             
play. Despite all his supposed power, his intellect, his experience,        
and his knowledge of men, Kutuzov- having taken into consideration the      
Cossack's report, a note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to        
the Emperor, the wishes he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the            
fact that all the generals expressed the same wish- could no longer         
check the inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he             
regarded as useless and harmful- gave his approval, that is, to the         
accomplished fact.                                                          
                                                                            
BK13|CH4                                                                    
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  Bennigsen's note and the Cossack's information that the left flank        
of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it           
was necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of         
October.                                                                    
  On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed the                
dispositions. Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the        
further arrangements.                                                       
  "All right- all right. I haven't time just now," replied Ermolov,         
and left the hut.                                                           
  The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the               
Austerlitz dispositions, it was written- though not in German this          
time:                                                                       
  "The First Column will march here and here," "the Second Column will      
march there and there," and so on; and on paper, all these columns          
arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.      
Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,      
and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at         
the appointed time.                                                         
                                                     {BK13|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been          
prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to               
Ermolov to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov's        
orderly, pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him,         
went to Ermolov's quarters.                                                 
  "Gone away," said Ermolov's orderly.                                      
  The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom               
Ermolov was often to be found.                                              
  "No, and the general's out too."                                          
  The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.                
                                                    {BK13|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  "No, he's gone out."                                                      
  "If only they don't make me responsible for this delay! What a            
nuisance it is!" thought the officer, and he rode round the whole           
camp. One man said he had seen Ermolov ride past with some other            
generals, others said he must have returned home. The officer searched      
till six o'clock in the evening without even stopping to eat.               
Ermolov was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he was. The           
officer snatched a little food at a comrade's, and rode again to the        
vanguard to find Miloradovich. Miloradovich too was away, but here          
he was told that he had gone to a ball at General Kikin's and that          
Ermolov was probably there too.                                             
  "But where is it?"                                                        
  "Why, there, over at Echkino," said a Cossack officer, pointing to a      
country house in the far distance.                                          
  "What, outside our line?"                                                 
                                                    {BK13|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  "They've put two regiments as outposts, and they're having such a         
spree there, it's awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!"              
  The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While still at a        
distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier's dance          
song proceeding from the house.                                             
  "In the meadows... in the meadows!" he heard, accompanied by              
whistling and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by          
shouts. These sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he         
was afraid that he would be blamed for not having executed sooner           
the important order entrusted to him. It was already past eight             
o'clock. He dismounted and went up into the porch of a large country        
house which had remained intact between the Russian and French forces.      
In the refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling about with      
wine and viands. Groups of singers stood outside the windows. The           
officer was admitted and immediately saw all the chief generals of the      
army together, and among them Ermolov's big imposing figure. They           
all had their coats unbuttoned and were standing in a semicircle            
with flushed and animated faces, laughing loudly. In the middle of the      
room a short handsome general with a red face was dancing the trepak        
with much spirit and agility.                                               
  "Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!"                        
  The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a         
moment he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait;         
but one of the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come            
about, informed Ermolov.                                                    
                                                    {BK13|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what           
the officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.            
-                                                                           
  "You think he went off just by chance?" said a comrade, who was on        
the staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards,                 
referring to Ermolov. "It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get        
Konovnitsyn into trouble. You'll see what a mess there'll be                
tomorrow."                                                                  
                                                                            
BK13|CH5                                                                    
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called           
early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant                   
consciousness of having to direct a battle he did not approve of,           
got into his caleche and drove from Letashovka (a village three and         
a half miles from Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns        
were to meet. He sat in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns,         
and listening for any sound of firing on the right as an indication         
that the action had begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn      
morning was just dawning. On approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed           
cavalrymen leading their horses to water across the road along which        
he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly, stopped his             
carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged to. They belonged        
to a column that should have been far in front and in ambush long           
before then. "It may be a mistake," thought the old commander in            
chief. But a little further on he saw infantry regiments with their         
arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed, eating their rye          
porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The officer             
reported that no order to advance had been received.                        
  "How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself immediately and      
sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his caleche, he waited            
with drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down.      
When Eykhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned,         
appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer         
was to blame for the mistake, but because he was an object of               
sufficient importance for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and           
panting the old man fell into that state of fury in which he sometimes      
used to roll on the ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him        
with his hands, shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another          
man, Captain Brozin, who happened to turn up and who was not at all to      
blame, suffered the same fate.                                              
  "What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you shot!             
Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and          
reeling.                                                                    
  He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene         
Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever        
had in Russia, to be placed in this position- made the laughingstock        
of the whole army! "I needn't have been in such a hurry to pray             
about today, or have kept awake thinking everything over all night,"        
thought he to himself. "When I was a chit of an officer no one would        
have dared to mock me so... and now!" He was in a state of physical         
suffering as if from corporal punishment, and could not avoid               
expressing it by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon         
began to fail him, and looking about him, conscious of having said          
much that was amiss, he again got into his caleche and drove back in        
silence.                                                                    
  His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he          
listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to        
see him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen,              
Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should          
be executed next day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.                 
                                                                            
BK13|CH6                                                                    
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the            
evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with          
dark purple clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy,         
and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of        
the artillery could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk        
out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried        
to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking            
heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some columns,                  
supposing. they had reached their destination, halted, piled arms, and      
settled down on the cold ground, but the majority marched all night         
and arrived at places where they evidently should not have been.            
  Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important           
detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time.            
This detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path            
leading from the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.                        
  Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened by      
a deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a            
Polish sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in Polish that        
he had come over because he had been slighted in the service: that          
he ought long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver          
than any of them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them            
out. He said that Murat was spending the night less than a mile from        
where they were, and that if they would let him have a convoy of a          
hundred men he would capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov                 
consulted his fellow officers.                                              
  The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go      
and everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and          
arguing, Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go      
with the Polish sergeant.                                                   
  "Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at              
parting, "if you have been lying I'll have you hanged like a dog;           
but if it's true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!"                     
                                                     {BK13|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and          
rode away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They                 
disappeared into the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen           
Grekov off, returned, shivering from the freshness of the early dawn        
and excited by what he had undertaken on his own responsibility, and        
began looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in the deceptive          
light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns ought to have begun      
to appear on an open declivity to his right. He looked in that              
direction, but though the columns would have been visible quite far         
off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count that things were      
beginning to stir in the French camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant         
confirmed this.                                                             
  "Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking at the camp.       
  As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before         
our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the        
sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian      
attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which he      
would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a             
commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!                        
  "I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count.                        
  "They can still be called back," said one of his suite, who like          
Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the         
enemy's camp.                                                               
                                                    {BK13|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?"       
  "Will you have them fetched back?"                                        
  "Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden          
determination, looking at his watch. "It will be too late. It is quite      
light."                                                                     
  And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When           
Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the abandoned         
attempt and by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not      
appear, as well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance.      
All his men felt the same excitement.                                       
  "Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and         
crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!"                           
                                                    {BK13|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  "Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack               
companies, trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if      
poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.        
  One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw      
the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just         
waking up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and      
horses.                                                                     
  Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind      
and around them, they would have captured Murat and everything              
there. That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to         
make the Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners.         
None of them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and              
thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides standards and             
(what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses, saddles,               
horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt with, the               
prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided- not without some             
shouting and even a little themselves- and it was on this that the          
Cossacks all busied themselves.                                             
  The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover                   
themselves: they formed into detachments and began firing.                  
Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other columns to arrive, advanced      
no further.                                                                 
  Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First        
Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,          
commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due             
order and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their           
appointed places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully,           
began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and      
finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about,         
shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and          
were late, gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and      
went forward, simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or           
other!" And they did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right        
places; a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late        
to be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this         
battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped                 
assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down             
everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's corps in a wood when it           
was already broad daylight, though the corps should long before have        
joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing        
that someone must be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the            
commander of the corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying            
that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of        
placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion,           
and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise and quite      
contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to Toll.       
                                                    {BK13|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                          
                                                                            
BK13|CH7                                                                    
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the         
front, but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that               
nothing but confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his      
will, and as far as was in his power held the troops back. He did           
not advance.                                                                
  He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering            
suggestions that they should attack.                                        
  "The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don't see that we      
are unable to execute complicated maneuvers," said he to                    
Miloradovich who asked permission to advance.                               
  "We couldn't take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in      
time, and nothing can be done now!" he replied to someone else.             
  When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear- where according        
to the reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody- there      
were now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov      
who was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous         
day.                                                                        
                                                     {BK13|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  "You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,        
but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,        
forewarned, takes measures accordingly."                                    
  Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these           
words. He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that        
Kutuzov would content himself with that hint.                               
  "He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly,            
nudging with his knee Raevski who was at his side.                          
  Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully             
remarked:                                                                   
  "It is not too late yet, your Highness- the enemy has not gone away-      
if you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as      
see a little smoke."                                                        
                                                    {BK13|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's         
troops were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every               
hundred paces he halted for three quarters of an hour.                      
  The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had           
done: the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.      
  In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration,      
and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also      
received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various               
grades, and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.      
  "That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the        
Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be      
understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that          
we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today.           
But people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking      
about or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle- Tarutino,              
Borodino, or Austerlitz- takes place as those who planned it                
anticipated. That is an essential condition.                                
  A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than          
during a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence        
the course taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in        
advance and never coincides with the direction of any one force.            
                                                    {BK13|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a             
given body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one        
of those forces, but will always be a mean- what in mechanics is            
represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.                   
  If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French             
ones, we find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with         
previously formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those      
descriptions are false.                                                     
  The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had          
in view- to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the      
dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in view-      
to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the        
whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor           
the aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish          
himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got,         
and so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and      
what all the Russians of that day desired- to drive the French out          
of Russia and destroy their army- it is quite clear that the battle of      
Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was           
wanted at that stage of the campaign. It would be difficult and even        
impossible to imagine any result more opportune than the actual             
outcome of this battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant          
losses, despite the greatest confusion, the most important results          
of the whole campaign were attained: the transition from retreat to         
advance, an exposure of the weakness of the French, and the                 
administration of that shock which Napoleon's army had only awaited to      
begin its flight.                                                           
                                                                            
BK13|CH8                                                                    
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa;         
there can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in      
the hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their             
ancient capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and      
incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon's hands. The Russian army, only         
half the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to          
attack for a whole month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. He         
can either fall on the Russian army with double its strength and            
destroy it; negotiate an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal        
make a menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse,      
return to Smolensk or Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special      
genius would seem to be required to retain the brilliant position           
the French held at that time. For that, only very simple and easy           
steps were necessary: not to allow the troops to loot, to prepare           
winter clothing- of which there was sufficient in Moscow for the whole      
army- and methodically to collect the provisions, of which                  
(according to the French historians) there were enough in Moscow to         
supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of        
all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of the army, took      
none of these steps.                                                        
  He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used        
his power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses         
open to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in             
Moscow, advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring          
by a more northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov        
afterwards took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined         
than what he actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting      
the troops plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a            
garrison behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without          
joining battle, turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets,           
again without attempting to break through and take the road Kutuzov         
took, but retiring instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk        
road. Nothing more stupid than that could have been devised, or more        
disastrous for the army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon's aim been      
to destroy his army, the most skillful strategist could hardly have         
devised any series of actions that would so completely have                 
accomplished that purpose, independently of anything the Russian            
army might do.                                                              
  Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he                 
destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very             
stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to      
Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a            
genius.                                                                     
  In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the        
personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws            
that guided the event.                                                      
  The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon's faculties as            
having weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did           
not justify his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to        
do the best he could for himself and his army, as he had done               
previously and as he did subsequently in 1813. His activity at that         
time was no less astounding than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in              
Austria, and in Prussia. We do not know for certain in how far his          
genius was genuine in Egypt- where forty centuries looked down upon         
his grandeur- for his great exploits there are all told us by               
Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius in Austria or           
Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French or German          
sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps without          
fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to          
recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on          
in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in      
order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the          
matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.              
                                                     {BK13|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as            
elsewhere. Order after order order and plan after plan were issued          
by him from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The        
absence of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of            
Moscow, did not disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the         
welfare of his army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare        
of the people of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or        
of diplomatic considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated        
peace.                                                                      
                                                                            
BK13|CH9                                                                    
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry        
into Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the            
movements of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different      
roads, and charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful              
directions about the fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a            
brilliant plan for a future campaign over the whole map of Russia.          
  With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain            
Yakovlev, who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how          
to get out of Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and        
his magnanimity, and having written a letter to the Emperor                 
Alexander in which he considered it his duty to inform his Friend           
and Brother that Rostopchin had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he         
dispatched Yakovlev to Petersburg.                                          
  Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to               
Tutolmin, he dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.       
  With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave         
orders to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel              
Rostopchin was punished by an order to burn down his houses.                
  With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a               
constitution. A municipality was established and the following              
announcement issued:                                                        
                                                     {BK13|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
                        INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!                              
  Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King          
desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you           
how he punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been           
taken to put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A      
paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form            
your municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of          
your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished          
by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city         
will wear a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only         
wear a red ribbon round the left arm.                                       
  The city police is established on its former footing, and better          
order already prevails in consequence of its activity. The                  
government has appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of             
police, and twenty commissaries or captains of wards have been              
appointed to the different wards of the city. You will recognize            
them by the white ribbon they will wear on the left arm. Several            
churches of different denominations are open, and divine service is         
performed in them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are returning every      
day to their homes. and orders have been given that they should find        
in them the help and protection due to their misfortunes. These are         
the measures the government has adopted to re-establish order and           
relieve youp condition. But to achieve this aim it is necessary that        
you should add your efforts and should, if possible, forget the             
misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a less          
cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death         
awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains        
of your property, and finally that you should not doubt that these          
will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most        
just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you may         
be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of a          
state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to          
another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the        
military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to           
flow!                                                                       
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK13|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all           
the troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude* to obtain              
provisions for themselves, so that the army might have its future           
provided for.                                                               
-                                                                           
  *As looters.                                                              
-                                                                           
  With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be               
brought back and services to be again performed in the churches.            
                                                    {BK13|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the                 
following was placarded everywhere:                                         
-                                                                           
                             PROCLAMATION!                                  
  You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom            
misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of           
the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!          
Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being                
restored in it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from             
their hiding places on finding that they are respected. Any violence        
to them or to their property is promptly punished. His Majesty the          
Emperor and King protects them, and considers no one among you his          
enemy except those who disobey his orders. He desires to end your           
misfortunes and restore you to your homes and families. Respond,            
therefore, to his benevolent intentions and come to us without fear.        
Inhabitants, return with confidence to your abodes! You will soon find      
means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and industrious artisans,         
return to your work, your houses, your shops, where the protection          
of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay for your work.           
And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where you are           
hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full                 
assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in         
the city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the            
products of the soil. The government has taken the following steps          
to ensure freedom of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants,               
husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without      
any danger bring their supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets,      
of which one is on the Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision      
Market. (2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices as        
seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a        
fair price he will be free to take his goods back to his village and        
no one may hinder him under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday          
of each week are appointed as the chief market days and to that end         
a sufficient number of troops will be stationed along the highroads on      
Tuesdays and Saturdays at such distances from the town as to protect        
the carts. (4) Similar measures will be taken that peasants with their      
carts and horses may meet with no hindrance on their return journey.        
(5) Steps will immediately be taken to re-establish ordinary trading.       
  Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and             
artisans, to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry         
out the paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to      
co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and            
confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!                   
                                                    {BK13|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
-                                                                           
  With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the           
people, reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The           
Emperor rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and,           
despite his preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the           
theaters that were established by his order.                                
  In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,          
Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma        
Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining      
tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He      
visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by           
him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then,      
as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in        
forged Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of             
these means by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let      
relief be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food         
was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part      
enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to         
purchase food from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them."      
  With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being          
issued to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military      
duties and to suppress robbery.                                             
                                                                            
BK13|CH10                                                                   
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans- which         
were not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances- did      
not affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock         
detached from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless        
way without engaging the cogwheels.                                         
  With reference to the military side- the plan of campaign- that work      
of genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised           
anything more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and              
enters into a polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius        
must be referred not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October-         
that plan never was or could be executed, for it was quite out of           
touch with the facts of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for        
which la Mosquee (as Napoleon termed the church of Basil the                
Beatified) was to have been razed to the ground, proved quite useless.      
The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's          
wish that it should be blown up when he left Moscow- as a child             
wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be beaten. The pursuit      
of the Russian army, about which Napoleon was so concerned, produced        
an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch with the               
Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to Thiers it was          
only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the skill- and apparently        
the genius- of Murat.                                                       
  With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon's arguments as to his           
magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief      
concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;        
Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their           
embassage.                                                                  
  With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed         
incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.                                
  With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a             
municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain      
people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of            
preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from             
being looted.                                                               
                                                    {BK13|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so              
easily been settled by Napoleon's visit to a mosque, no results were        
achieved. Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to          
carry out Napoleon's wish, but one of them was slapped in the face          
by a French soldier while conducting service, and a French official         
reported of another that: "The priest whom I found and invited to           
say Mass cleaned and locked up the church. That night the doors were        
again broken open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and           
other disorders perpetrated."                                               
  With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious               
workmen and to peasants evoked no response. There were no                   
industrious workmen, and the peasants caught the commissaries who           
ventured too far out of town with the proclamation and killed them.         
  As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the            
troops, these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in      
the Kremlin and in Posnyakov's house were closed again at once because      
the actors and actresses were robbed.                                       
  Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as         
well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The      
French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the             
paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to           
the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.        
  But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders         
given by the authorities at that time was Napoleon's attempt to stop        
the looting and re-establish discipline.                                    
                                                   {BK13|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  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."           
                                                   {BK13|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  "The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict              
orders to stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually         
seen returning to the Kremlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and             
pillage were renewed more violently than ever yesterday evening,            
last night, and today. The Emperor sees with regret that the picked         
soldiers appointed to guard his person, who should set an example of        
discipline, carry disobedience to such a point that they break into         
the cellars and stores containing army supplies. Others have disgraced      
themselves to the extent of disobeying sentinels and officers, and          
have abused and beaten them."                                               
  "The Grand Marshal of the palace," wrote the governor, "complains         
bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to         
commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows      
of the Emperor."                                                            
  That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot         
the provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated      
and perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it         
did not go away.                                                            
  It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused          
by the capture of transport trains on the Smolensk road, and by the         
battle of Tarutino. The news of that battle of Tarutino,                    
unexpectedly received by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a              
desire to punish the Russians (Thiers says), and he issued the order        
for departure which the whole army was demanding.                           
  Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they           
had stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal tresor, but        
on seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers          
says) horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not          
order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with        
those of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the         
caleches and carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that      
it was a very good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry          
provisions, the sick, and the wounded.                                      
                                                   {BK13|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal           
which feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To          
study the skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from           
the time it entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying           
the dying leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very             
often a wounded animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the            
hunter's gun, runs forward and back again, and hastens its own end.         
Napoleon, under pressure from his whole army, did the same thing.           
The rustle of the battle of Tarutino frightened the beast, and it           
rushed forward onto the hunter's gun, reached him, turned back, and         
finally- like any wild beast- ran back along the most                       
disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was familiar.       
  During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have         
been the leader of all these movements- as the figurehead of a ship         
may seem to a savage to guide the vessel- acted like a child who,           
holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving         
it.                                                                         
                                                                            
BK13|CH11                                                                   
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of           
the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little        
blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped           
about him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside             
Karataev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but           
always returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it           
still belonged to nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor;        
the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others        
called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name,          
or even of a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the        
blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round          
as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often            
gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three         
legs, as if disdaining to use all four. Everything pleased it. Now          
it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now bask in the sun        
with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic about playing with      
a chip of wood or a straw.                                                  
  Pierre's attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only          
remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by      
Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and      
a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this          
time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of      
solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache        
covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested          
with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes           
was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The              
former slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now            
replaced by an energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet      
were bare.                                                                  
  Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and              
horsemen were passing that morning, then into the distance across           
the river, then at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about        
biting him, and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in      
various positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he           
looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction               
flitted across his face. The sight of them reminded him of all he           
had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection        
was pleasant to him.                                                        
  For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts      
in the mornings- what is called an "old wives' summer."                     
  In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly        
pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in      
the air.                                                                    
                                                    {BK13|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  On everything- far and near- lay the magic crystal glitter seen only      
at that time autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,        
with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare           
trees, the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green              
church spire, and the corners of the white house in the distance,           
all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with      
unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a          
half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still         
showing dark green beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled      
house- which in dull weather was repulsively ugly- seemed quietly           
beautiful now, in the clear, motionless brilliance.                         
  A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a                
skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from              
behind a corner of the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly           
wink.                                                                       
  "What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!" (Their name for Pierre.) "Eh?            
Just like spring!"                                                          
  And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his           
pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.              
  "To be on the march in such weather..." he began.                         
                                                   {BK13|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the                
corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there        
ought to be an order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the      
soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the            
corporal that something should be done about him. The corporal replied      
that Pierre need not worry about that as they had an ambulance and a        
permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the sick, and         
that in general everything that could happen had been foreseen by           
the authorities.                                                            
  "Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the              
captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to         
the captain when he makes his round, he will do anything for you."          
  (The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with         
Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.)                                 
  "'You see, St. Thomas,' he said to me the other day. 'Monsieur Kiril      
is a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who      
has had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.... If he        
wants anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has            
studied, you see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for      
your sake I mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not         
been for you that affair would have ended ill."                             
  And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The           
affair he had alluded to had happened a few days before- a fight            
between the prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had          
succeeded in pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had         
heard Pierre talking to the corporal immediately asked what the             
Frenchman had said. While Pierre was repeating what he had been told        
about the army leaving Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier      
came up to the door of the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his            
fingers to his forehead by way of greeting, he asked Pierre whether         
the soldier Platoche to whom he had given a shirt to sew was in that        
shed.                                                                       
                                                   {BK13|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to         
them, which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into             
boots and shirts for them.                                                  
  "Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly      
folded shirt.                                                               
  Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at           
work, was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot.      
His hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree         
bast, and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.           
  "A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here          
it is, ready," said Platon, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had          
sewn.                                                                       
  The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his      
hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had      
a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin            
bare body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking      
on would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly.        
None of the prisoners said a word.                                          
                                                   {BK13|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  "See, it fits well!" Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt             
straight.                                                                   
  The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without          
raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.          
  "You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper        
tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,"            
said Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his        
work.                                                                       
  "It's good, quite good, thank you," said the Frenchman, in French,        
"but there must be some linen left over.                                    
  "It will fit better still when it sets to your body," said Karataev,      
still admiring his handiwork. "You'll be nice and comfortable...."          
                                                   {BK13|CH11 ^paragraph 25}
  "Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?" said the         
Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note           
and gave it to Karataev. "But give me the pieces that are over."            
  Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman      
was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the      
Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The              
Frenchman insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over        
and asked Pierre to translate what he said.                                 
  "What does he want the bits for?" said Karataev. "They'd make fine        
leg bands for us. Well, never mind."                                        
  And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression,            
took a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the      
Frenchman without looking at him. "Oh dear!" muttered Karataev and          
went away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment,      
then looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre's look had told         
him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:             
  "Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!" And handing back the        
odd bits he turned and went out.                                            
                                                   {BK13|CH11 ^paragraph 30}
  "There, look at that," said Karataev, swaying his head. "People said      
they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It's what the old        
folk used to say: 'A sweating hand's an open hand, a dry hand's             
close.' He's naked, but yet he's given it back."                            
  Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the         
pieces.                                                                     
  "But they'll make grand leg bands, dear friend," he said, and went        
back into the shed.                                                         
                                                                            
BK13|CH12                                                                   
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and            
though the French had offered to move him from the men's to the             
officers' shed, he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.           
  In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the             
extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his             
physical strength and health, of which he had till then been                
unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations          
came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he         
endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this        
time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly          
striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that         
tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in      
the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in                 
philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in          
wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for           
Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning- and all these quests and            
experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had        
found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death,        
through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.              
  Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as      
it were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the             
agitating thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important.      
It did not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or              
politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things            
were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge             
concerning them and therefore could not do so. "Russia and summer           
weather are not bound together," he thought, repeating words of             
Karataev's which he found strangely consoling. His intention of             
killing Napoleon and his calculations of the cabalistic number of           
the beast of the Apocalypse now seemed to him meaningless and even          
ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his name should        
not be smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing. What        
concern was it of his that somewhere or other that woman was leading        
the life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and                  
especially to him, whether or not they found out that their prisoner's      
name was Count Bezukhov?                                                    
  He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and           
quite agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts        
somewhat differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that               
happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of           
bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire         
for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and          
never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental               
reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs      
and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is,          
of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's          
highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully                 
appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking         
when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth        
when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk         
and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs- good food,      
cleanliness, and freedom- now that he was deprived of all this, seemed      
to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of                
occupation, that is, of his way of life- now that that was so               
restricted- seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a         
superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying          
one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation- such          
freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had           
given him in his own life- is just what makes the choice of occupation      
insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of              
having an occupation.                                                       
  All Pierre's daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free.      
Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke        
with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable,         
strong, joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind        
and inner freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.             
                                                    {BK13|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK13|CH13                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and            
seventh of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts               
loaded, and troops and baggage trains started.                              
  At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing         
shakos and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in        
front of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses            
sounded all along the lines.                                                
  In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only           
awaited the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov, pale and thin        
with dark shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot           
and not dressed. His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his             
face, gazed inquiringly at his comrades who were paying no attention        
to him, and he moaned regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so        
much his sufferings that caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as           
his fear and grief at being left alone.                                     
  Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes                
Karataev had made for him from some leather a French soldier had            
torn off a tea chest and brought to have his boots mended with, went        
up to the sick man and squatted down beside him.                            
  "You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They have a              
hospital here. You may be better off than we others," said Pierre.          
                                                    {BK13|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.         
                                                   {BK13|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  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.          
                                                   {BK13|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                    
                                                   {BK13|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam..." rattled the drums, and Pierre                
understood that this mysterious force completely controlled these           
men and that it was now useless to say any more.                            
  The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to        
march in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among         
them, and about three hundred men.                                          
  The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all                 
strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at         
him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him        
walked a fat major with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing      
a Kazan dressing grown tied round with a towel, and who evidently           
enjoyed the respect of his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in           
which he clasped his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing        
gown and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting           
and puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody because he         
thought he was being pushed and that they were all hurrying when            
they had nowhere to hurry to and were all surprised at something            
when there was nothing to be surprised at. Another, a thin little           
officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing where they were now         
being taken and how far they would get that day. An official in felt        
boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side to side        
and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations        
as to what had been burned down and what this or that part of the city      
was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent was a           
Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was           
mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.            
  "What are you disputing about?" said the major angrily. "What does        
it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it's           
burned down, and there's an end of it.... What are you pushing for?         
Isn't the road wide enough?" said he, turning to a man behind him           
who was not pushing him at all.                                             
  "Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?" the prisoners on one side and          
another were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. "All          
beyond the river, and Zubova, and in the Kremlin.... Just look!             
There's not half of it left. Yes, I told you- the whole quarter beyond      
the river, and so it is."                                                   
                                                   {BK13|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  "Well, you know it's burned, so what's the use of talking?" said the      
major.                                                                      
  As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of the few            
unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly           
started to one side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.      
  "Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And        
smeared with something!"                                                    
  Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked           
these exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the        
palings surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw      
better than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set           
upright against the palings with its face smeared with soot.                
  "Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!..." the          
convoy guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh             
virulence, drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who          
were gazing at the dead man.                                                
                                                                            
BK13|CH14                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners         
marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons          
belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they      
came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with        
private vehicles.                                                           
  At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get          
across. From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving          
baggage trains before and behind them. To the right, where the              
Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts          
stretched away into the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais'         
corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the         
riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and                
transport.                                                                  
  Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing        
the Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga         
road. But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of              
Beauharnais' train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the            
Kaluga road when the vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging            
from the Great Ordynka Street.                                              
  When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few        
steps forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles      
and men crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few           
hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking        
more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the          
streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and           
the prisoners jammed close together had to stand for some hours at          
that crossway. From all sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard         
the rattle of wheels, the tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger      
and abuse. Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house,        
listening to that noise which mingled in his imagination with the roll      
of the drums.                                                               
  To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the          
wall of the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.             
                                                    {BK13|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  "What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They've loaded goods            
even on the cannon! Look there, those are furs!" they exclaimed. "Just      
see what the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one           
has behind in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some          
icons, by heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has            
loaded himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they've even grabbed      
those chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks....           
Heavens! They're fighting."                                                 
  "That's right, hit him on the snout- on his snout! Like this, we          
shan't get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be      
Napoleon's own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown!            
It's like a portable house.... That fellow's dropped his sack and           
doesn't see it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not              
bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you         
pass... Just look, there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven,        
so they are! In carriages- see how comfortably they've settled              
themselves!"                                                                
  Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general curiosity        
bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to         
his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted             
their curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts,      
closely squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in          
glaring colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.               
  From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the               
mysterious force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful:             
neither the corpse smeared with soot for fun nor these women                
hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now               
witnessed scarcely made an impression on him- as if his soul, making        
ready for a hard struggle, refused to receive impressions that might        
weaken it.                                                                  
  The women's vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts,               
soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers,             
ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and then women.                    
                                                   {BK13|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.      
  All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some                 
invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came          
flowing from the different streets with one and the same desire to get      
on quickly; they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to        
fight, white teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of           
abuse flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the same               
swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck           
Pierre that morning on the corporal's face when the drums were              
beating.                                                                    
  It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the            
escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way        
in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all            
sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road.                                        
  They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the      
sun began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men      
began to prepare for their night's rest. They all appeared angry and        
dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could      
be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran            
into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole.               
Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat        
the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others              
fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly           
wounded on the head by a sword.                                             
  It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid              
fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and         
the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and                 
eagerness to push on that had seized them at the start. Once at a           
standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know         
where they were going, and that much that was painful and difficult         
awaited them on this journey.                                               
                                                   {BK13|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than         
they had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the          
first time received horseflesh for their meat ration.                       
  From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what              
seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in                
unexpected contrast to their former friendly relations.                     
  This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of         
prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one            
Russian soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had                
escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for          
straying too far from the road, and heard his friend the captain            
reprimand and threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on        
account of the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's      
excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer            
replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre         
felt that that fatal force which had crushed him during the                 
executions, but which be had not felt during his imprisonment, now          
again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but he felt that in        
proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush him, there grew      
and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent of it.             
  He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with      
his comrades.                                                               
  Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen          
in Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of      
the order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in          
reaction against the worsening of their position they were all              
particularly animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences,        
of amusing scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and               
avoided all talk of their present situation.                                
                                                   {BK13|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                           
                                                                            
BK13|CH15                                                                   
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a         
letter from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow,         
though Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga          
road. Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one              
formerly brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no                
question of peace.                                                          
  Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla           
detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of                 
Broussier's division had been seen at Forminsk and that being               
separated from the rest of the French army they might easily be             
destroyed. The soldiers and officers again demanded action. Generals        
on the staff, excited by the memory of the easy victory at Tarutino,        
urged Kutuzov to carry out Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not           
consider any offensive necessary. The result was a compromise which         
was inevitable: a small detachment was sent to Forminsk to attack           
Broussier.                                                                  
  By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most        
difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov- that same          
modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing          
up plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering         
crosses on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was          
spoken of as undecided and undiscerning- but whom we find commanding        
wherever the position was most difficult all through the                    
Russo-French wars from Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he        
remained last at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what        
was possible when all were flying and perishing and not a single            
general was left in the rear guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk      
with twenty thousand men to defend the town against Napoleon's whole        
army. In Smolensk, at the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in         
a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the bombardment of the        
town- and Smolensk held out all day long. At the battle of Borodino,        
when Bagration was killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank      
had fallen and the full force of the French artillery fire was              
directed against it, the man sent there was this same irresolute and        
undiscerning Dokhturov- Kutuzov hastening to rectify a mistake he           
had made by sending someone else there first. And the quiet little          
Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of           
the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and        
prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said.                      
  It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk and from there          
to Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last battle with the French        
was fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army          
began; and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of        
the campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that      
dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest                 
testimony to his merit.                                                     
  It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a         
machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance         
and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most      
important part. The man who does not understand the construction of         
the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which        
revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine,         
and not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.             
                                                    {BK13|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to                
Forminsk and stopped at the village of Aristovo, preparing                  
faithfully to execute the orders he had received, the whole French          
army having, in its convulsive movement, reached Murat's position           
apparently in order to give battle- suddenly without any reason turned      
off to the left onto the new Kaluga road and began to enter                 
Forminsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that time             
Dokhturov had under his command, besides Dorokhov's detachment, the         
two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslavin.                     
  On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo                
headquarters with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner          
said that the troops that had entered Forminsk that day were the            
vanguard of the whole army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army      
had left Moscow four days previously. That same evening a house serf        
who had come from Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering         
the town. Some Cossacks of Dokhturov's detachment reported having           
sighted the French Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From all      
these reports it was evident that where they had expected to meet a         
single division there was now the whole French army marching from           
Moscow in an unexpected direction- along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov         
was unwilling to undertake any action, as it was not clear to him           
now what he ought to do. He had been ordered to attack Forminsk. But        
only Broussier had been there at that time and now the whole French         
army was there. Ermolov wished to act on his own judgment, but              
Dokhturov insisted that he must have Kutuzov's instructions. So it was      
decided to send a dispatch to the staff.                                    
  For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was chosen, who        
was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a      
written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the          
dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff         
accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.                                 
                                                                            
BK13|CH16                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four           
days. Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour      
and a half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka      
after one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle        
fence hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he      
entered a dark passage.                                                     
  "The general on duty, quick! It's very important!" said he to             
someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.                 
  "He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third          
night he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper.          
"You should wake the captain first."                                        
  "But this is very important, from General Dokhturov," said                
Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in      
the dark.                                                                   
  The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.             
                                                    {BK13|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "Your honor, your honor! A courier."                                      
  "What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice.                      
  "From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk,"      
said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but          
guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.                          
  The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.                     
  "I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for something. "He is        
very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor."                                    
                                                   {BK13|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My orders are to give        
it at once to the general on duty."                                         
  "Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you      
always hide it?" said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,      
to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn's adjutant.)             
"I've found it, I've found it!" he added.                                   
  The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling for         
something on the candlestick.                                               
  "Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust.                             
  By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's                
youthful face as he held the candle, and the face of another man who        
was still asleep. This was Konovnitsyn.                                     
                                                   {BK13|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned      
up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from        
the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were      
running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was                
bespattered all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it         
with his sleeve.                                                            
  "Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking the envelope.         
  "The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners, Cossacks,         
and the scouts all say the same thing."                                     
  "There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him," said                
Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay         
covered by a greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said he. (Konovnitsyn did        
not stir.) "To the General Staff!" he said with a smile, knowing            
that those words would be sure to arouse him.                               
  And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On               
Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,         
there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote      
from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face             
assumed its habitual calm and firm appearance.                              
                                                   {BK13|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately but without           
hurry, blinking at the light.                                               
  While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke the seal        
and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his          
legs in their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began               
putting on his boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair        
over his temples, and donned his cap.                                       
  "Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness."                    
  Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of           
great importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or      
ask himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest         
him. He regarded the whole business of the war not with his                 
intelligence or his reason but by something else. There was within him      
a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one          
must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only         
attend to one's own work. And he did his work, giving his whole             
strength to the task.                                                       
  Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have been           
included merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called           
heroes of 1812- the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and              
Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov he had the reputation of being a man of      
very limited capacity and information, and like Dokhturov he never          
made plans of battle but was always found where the situation was most      
difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he had always           
slept with his door open, giving orders that every messenger should be      
allowed to wake him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that         
Kutuzov reproved him for it and feared to send him to the front, and        
like Dokhturov he was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without        
clatter or noise, constitute the most essential part of the machine.        
                                                   {BK13|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn frowned-      
partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the unpleasant      
thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of influential           
men on the staff would be stirred up by this news, especially               
Bennigsen, who ever since Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with           
Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue orders,        
and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him              
though he knew it could not be helped.                                      
  And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news,                
immediately began to expound his plans to a general sharing his             
quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded        
him that they must go to see his Highness.                                  
                                                                            
BK13|CH17                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often         
fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his         
bed without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.               
  So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred            
head on his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and               
peering into the darkness.                                                  
  Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more           
influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him,            
Kutuzov was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his           
troops being obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The      
lesson of the Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which               
Kutuzov remembered with pain, must, he thought, have some effect on         
others too.                                                                 
  "They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.      
Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutuzov.          
He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will      
fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled,        
the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an                 
experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was wounded, and               
wounded as only the whole strength of Russia could have wounded it,         
but whether it was mortally wounded or not was still an undecided           
question. Now by the fact of Lauriston and Barthelemi having been           
sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure         
that the wound was mortal. But he needed further proofs and it was          
necessary to wait.                                                          
  "They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall      
see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!" thought he. "What            
for? Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are      
like children from whom one can't get any sensible account of what has      
happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But         
that's not what is needed now.                                              
                                                    {BK13|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  "And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to         
them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he         
remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have            
foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless."                    
  The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino      
was mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov's head for a whole month. On        
the one hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt      
assured with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and         
all the Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal.        
But in any case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for         
them and grew more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed         
during those sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those          
younger generals for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible               
contingencies, just like the younger men, but with this difference,         
that he saw thousands of contingencies instead of two or three and          
based nothing on them. The longer he thought the more contingencies         
presented themselves. He imagined all sorts of movements of the             
Napoleonic army as a whole or in sections- against Petersburg, or           
against him, or to outflank him. He thought too of the possibility          
(which he feared most of all) that Napoleon might fight him with his        
own weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined         
that Napoleon's army might turn back through Medyn and Yukhnov, but         
the one thing he could not foresee was what happened- the insane,           
convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army during its first eleven days         
after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made possible what Kutuzov           
had not yet even dared to think of- the complete extermination of           
the French. Dorokhov's report about Broussier's division, the               
guerrillas' reports of distress in Napoleon's army, rumors of               
preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that         
the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were         
only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not        
to Kutuzov. With his sixty years' experience he knew what value to          
attach to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group      
all news so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew        
how readily in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary.        
And the more he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe           
it. This question absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to           
him only life's customary routine. To such customary routine                
belonged his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from        
Tarutino to Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the distribution        
of awards, his correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the           
destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, was his heart's one      
desire.                                                                     
  On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm         
and thinking of that.                                                       
  There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,         
Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.                                             
  "Eh, who's there? Come in, come in! What news?" the field marshal         
called out to them.                                                         
                                                   {BK13|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the              
substance of the news.                                                      
  "Who brought it?" asked Kutuzov with a look which, when the candle        
was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.                                  
  "There can be no doubt about it, your Highness."                          
  "Call him in, call him here."                                             
  Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big         
paunch resting against the other which was doubled under him. He            
screwed up his seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more                  
carefully, as if wishing to read in his face what preoccupied his           
own mind.                                                                   
                                                   {BK13|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  "Tell me, tell me, friend," said he to Bolkhovitinov in his low,          
aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his         
chest, "come nearer- nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That        
Napoleon has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?"                                
  Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he        
had been told to report.                                                    
  "Speak quicker, quicker! Don't torture me!" Kutuzov interrupted him.      
  Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting           
instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov               
checked him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered      
and wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side      
of the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.           
  "O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a           
tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O        
Lord!" and he wept.                                                         
                                                                            
BK13|CH18                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all        
Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by           
authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers,      
or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to                   
Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave          
orders for the evacuation of Kaluga- a retreat beyond which town            
seemed to him quite possible.                                               
  Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for           
his retreat fled in the opposite direction.                                 
  Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at             
Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would        
have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich          
southern provinces.                                                         
  But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from              
advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did           
not bar his way), the historians forget that nothing could have             
saved his army, for then already it bore within itself the germs of         
inevitable ruin. How could that army- which had found abundant              
supplies in Moscow and had trampled them underfoot instead of               
keeping them, and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions             
instead of storing them- how could that army recuperate in Kaluga           
province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those who lived in        
Moscow, and where fire had the same property of consuming what was set      
ablaze?                                                                     
  That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino        
and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were,           
the chemical elements of dissolution.                                       
                                                    {BK13|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  The members of what had once been an army- Napoleon himself and           
all his soldiers fled- without knowing whither, each concerned only to      
make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the           
hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.         
  So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets, when the        
generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all      
mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier      
Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing      
needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even        
Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all              
recognized.                                                                 
  But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away,           
there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must         
flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this         
shock came in due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de         
l'Empereur."                                                                
  The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out           
early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of           
marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and           
the scene of the previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks        
on the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly             
captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what           
saved him was the very thing that was destroying the French army,           
the booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went         
after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed           
after the plunder and Napoleon managed to escape.                           
  When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor            
himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was               
nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along the nearest,            
familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old stomach understood          
that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under           
the influence of the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once           
agreed with Mouton and issued orders- as the historians tell us- to         
retreat by the Smolensk road.                                               
                                                   {BK13|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated,            
does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces      
which influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhaysk          
(that is, the Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also.              
                                                                            
BK13|CH19                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to      
go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him          
at the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a         
promised land to have the strength to move.                                 
  The promised land for the French during their advance had been            
Moscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that native      
land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is            
absolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to              
himself: "Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I        
shall rest and spend the night," and during the first day's journey         
that resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his          
hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always      
magnified in a crowd.                                                       
  For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final          
goal- their native land- was too remote, and their immediate goal           
was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously          
intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that      
much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they          
were told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon         
himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this          
alone could give them strength to move on and endure their present          
privations. So both those who knew and those who did not know deceived      
themselves, and pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land.                
  Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising              
energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on.           
Besides the common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French            
into one mass and supplied them with a certain energy, there was            
another cause binding them together- their great numbers. As with           
the physical law of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individual        
human atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they moved            
like a whole nation.                                                        
  Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a            
prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one          
hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew      
each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps         
could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed             
themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to      
surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not            
always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift                
movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only         
difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to         
which the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certain        
limit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process of      
decomposition.                                                              
                                                    {BK13|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a               
certain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt         
the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the      
remaining snow becomes.                                                     
  Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When the         
flight of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined,      
what Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of               
October began to occur. The superior officers all wanted to                 
distinguish themselves, to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to            
overthrow the French, and all clamored for action.                          
  Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited          
in the case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.                
  He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block the         
road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate             
wretches? What is the use of that, when a third of their army has           
melted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" But      
drawing from his aged wisdom what they could understand, he told            
them of the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him,           
flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast.          
  Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the French      
near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up           
two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov        
they sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.                        
                                                   {BK13|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,        
trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to        
the attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost           
thousands of men.                                                           
  But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,        
closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily             
melting away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.                         
                                                                            
BK14                                                                        
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                              BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812                           
                                                                            
BK14|CH1                                                                    
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that                
followed it and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is      
one of the most instructive phenomena in history.                           
  All historians agree that the external activity of states and             
nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars,           
and that as a direct result of greater or less success in war the           
political strength of states and nations increases or decreases.            
  Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or              
emperor, having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his        
enemy's army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten                
thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several      
millions, all the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm           
the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one        
army against another is the cause, or at least an essential                 
indication, of an increase or decrease in the strength of the               
nation- even though it is unintelligible why the defeat of an army-         
a hundredth part of a nation- should oblige that whole nation to            
submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the rights of the              
conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the defeated.          
An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its rights          
in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army               
suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.                   
  So according to history it has been found from the most ancient           
times, and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon's wars serve to            
confirm this rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army         
Austria loses its rights, and the rights and the strength of France         
increase. The victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy         
the independent existence of Prussia.                                       
  But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow          
is taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia          
that ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and      
then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of      
history: to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the        
hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles        
that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible.                              
                                                     {BK14|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement      
nor any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist.      
What does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of        
China, we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is        
the historians' usual expedient when anything does not fit their            
standards); if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which            
only a small number of troops took part, we might treat it as an            
exception; but this event occurred before our fathers' eyes, and for        
them it was a question of the life or death of their fatherland, and        
it happened in the greatest of all known wars.                              
  The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to         
the expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does        
not produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of          
conquest; it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples        
lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in          
something else.                                                             
  The French historians, describing the condition of the French army        
before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,      
except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport- there was no          
forage for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one           
could remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather      
than let the French have it.                                                
  The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the            
peasants Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow           
drove in their carts to pillage the town, and in general personally         
failed to manifest any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable          
multitude of such peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for           
the high price offered them, but burned it instead.                         
  Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with             
rapiers according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The               
fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants,          
feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke        
but concerns his life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first        
cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine        
that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest           
means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by                  
traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of the case,      
insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier according to        
all the rules of art. One can imagine what confusion and obscurity          
would result from such an account of the duel.                              
                                                    {BK14|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of               
fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier         
and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to         
explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the                
historians who have described the event.                                    
  After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any        
previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the          
retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed          
retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the               
seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures            
from the rules.                                                             
  Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing      
attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel        
raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and          
to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to      
all the rules- as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite      
of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the              
rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it          
seemed rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to         
assume a pose en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and        
to make an adroit thrust en prime, and so on- the cudgel of the             
people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic strength,        
and without consulting anyone's tastes or rules and regardless of           
anything else, it rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but                 
consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had          
perished.                                                                   
  And it is well for a people who do not- as the French did in 1813-        
salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt          
of their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their                   
magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of trial, without asking what      
rules others have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick          
up the first cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the          
feeling of resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of      
contempt and compassion.                                                    
                                                                            
BK14|CH2                                                                    
  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.*                                   
-                                                                           
                                                     {BK14|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  *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.                                                    
                                                    {BK14|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                          
                                                    {BK14|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions,      
or divisions, conquer- that is, kill or take captive- all the               
others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and      
on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to         
the fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This          
equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us      
a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected            
historic units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such               
equations, a series of numbers could be obtained in which certain laws      
should exist and might be discovered.                                       
  The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when                  
attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms         
the truth that the strength of an army depends on its spirit. To            
lead men forward under fire more discipline (obtainable only by             
movement in masses) is needed than is needed to resist attacks. But         
this rule which leaves out of account the spirit of the army                
continually proves incorrect and is in particularly striking                
contrast to the facts when some strong rise or fall in the spirit of        
the troops occurs, as in all national wars.                                 
  The French, retreating in 1812- though according to tactics they          
should have separated into detachments to defend themselves-                
congregated into a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen        
that only the mass held the army together. The Russians, on the             
contrary, ought according to tactics to have attacked in mass, but          
in fact they split up into small units, because their spirit had so         
risen that separate individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the         
French without needing any compulsion to induce them to expose              
themselves to hardships and dangers.                                        
                                                                            
BK14|CH3                                                                    
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into        
Smolensk.                                                                   
  Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the             
government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had      
been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off        
as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denis              
Davydov, with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the          
value of this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of              
military science destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit        
for taking the first step toward regularizing this method of warfare.       
  On August 24 Davydov's first partisan detachment was formed and then      
others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more        
numerous these detachments became.                                          
  The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the      
fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree-           
the French army- and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October,          
when the French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of        
such companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some            
that adopted all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs,      
and the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack                
cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and        
groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan        
commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the         
course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village            
elder, who slew hundreds of the French.                                     
  The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of        
October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,        
amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded and      
captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,          
hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the        
end of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had        
become clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what      
could not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and          
moving according to rules at a distance from the French, still              
regarded many things as impossible. The small bands that had started        
their activities long before and had already observed the French            
closely considered things possible which the commanders of the big          
detachments did not dare to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who      
crept in among the French now considered everything possible.               
                                                     {BK14|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars) was with           
his group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early            
morning he and his party had been on the move. All day long he had          
been watching from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French      
convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the          
rest of the army, which- as was learned from spies and prisoners-           
was moving under a strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and           
Dolokhov (who also led a small party and moved in Denisov's vicinity),      
the commanders of some large divisions with staffs also knew of this        
convoy and, as Denisov expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for        
it. Two of the commanders of large parties- one a Pole and the other a      
German- sent invitations to Denisov almost simultaneously,                  
requesting him to join up with their divisions to attack the convoy.        
  "No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself," said Denisov on             
reading these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite           
his heartfelt desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general,      
he had to forgo that pleasure because he was already under the command      
of the Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the same         
effect, informing him that he was already under the command of the          
German.                                                                     
  Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov intended, without      
reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that           
convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from        
the village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the            
road between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests,               
extending in some places up to the road itself though in others a mile      
or more back from it. Through these forests Denisov and his party rode      
all day, sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to        
the very edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That            
morning, Cossacks of Denisov's party had seized and carried off into        
the forest two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck          
in the mud not far from Mikulino where the forest ran close to the          
road. Since then, and until evening, the party had the movements of         
the French without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach      
Shamshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after joining             
Dolokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a                
watchman's hut in the forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to            
surprise the French at dawn, falling like an avalanche on their             
heads from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow.            
  In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the forest            
came right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any        
fresh columns of French should show themselves.                             
  Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road in the same            
way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They      
reckoned that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two           
hundred, and Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of         
numbers did not deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what      
troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"- that      
is, a man from the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons        
had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all         
been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he      
was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops        
in that column.                                                             
                                                    {BK14|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear          
of putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon                 
Shcherbaty, a peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at        
least one of the French quartermasters who had been sent on in              
advance.                                                                    
                                                                            
BK14|CH4                                                                    
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both         
the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and            
then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.                                
  Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain           
ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides.            
Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears back, he            
shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before him. His            
thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry.                   
  Beside Denisov rode an esaul,* Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt      
cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.                
-                                                                           
  *A captain of Cossacks.                                                   
                                                     {BK14|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,          
pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm               
self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to      
say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first        
glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and         
uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the        
esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always      
and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was        
one with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold               
strength.                                                                   
  A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and        
wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.                        
  A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an             
enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a      
blue French overcoat.                                                       
  Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform        
and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on        
to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed          
about him with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that      
morning.                                                                    
                                                    {BK14|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars      
in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in        
French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The          
horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether                
chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes,         
looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles,              
reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the          
fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not      
to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and      
not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking in under their              
seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of         
the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses           
and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front,            
rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the          
water that lay in the ruts.                                                 
  Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and            
bumped his rider's knee against a tree.                                     
  "Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he      
struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and           
his comrades with mud.                                                      
  Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from           
hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more        
because he still had no news from Dolokhov and the man sent to capture      
a "tongue" had not returned.                                                
  "There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as         
today. It's too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it           
off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will              
snatch the prey from under our noses," thought Denisov, continually         
peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov.                   
                                                    {BK14|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to         
the right, Denisov stopped.                                                 
  "There's someone coming," said he.                                        
  The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.                      
  "There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not                   
presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself," said the          
esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not know.               
  The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer          
visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary      
gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and          
drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,      
standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young      
lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov      
and handed him a sodden envelope.                                           
                                                    {BK14|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  "From the general," said the officer. "Please excuse its not being        
quite dry."                                                                 
  Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.                       
  "There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'"          
said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading the        
dispatch. "But Komarov and I"- he pointed to the Cossack- "were             
prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what's this?" he           
asked, noticing the French drummer boy. "A prisoner? You've already         
been in action? May I speak to him?"                                        
  "Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through the dispatch.      
"Why didn't you say who you were?" and turning with a smile he held         
out his hand to the lad.                                                    
  The officer was Petya Rostov.                                             
                                                    {BK14|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with               
Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an officer- without hinting at        
their previous acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him           
Petya brightened up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner      
he had been rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already            
been in a battle near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had                   
distinguished himself there.                                                
  "Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted him, and his            
face again assumed its anxious expression.                                  
  "Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this is again fwom that      
German, you know. He"- he indicated Petya- "is serving under him."          
  And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a         
repetition of the German general's demand that he should join forces        
with him for an attack on the transport.                                    
  "If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under our             
noses," he added.                                                           
                                                    {BK14|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya- abashed by                 
Denisov's cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition          
of his trousers- furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat      
so that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air        
as possible.                                                                
  "Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked Denisov, holding         
his hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general        
for which he had prepared himself, "or shall I remain with your             
honor?"                                                                     
  "Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But can you stay till           
tomowwow?"                                                                  
  "Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya.                         
  "But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?"             
asked Denisov.                                                              
                                                    {BK14|CH4 ^paragraph 35}
  Petya blushed.                                                            
  "He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he returned,               
inquiringly.                                                                
  "Well, all wight," said Denisov.                                          
  And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting        
place arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest, and told the          
officer on the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant)      
to go and find out where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that        
evening. Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya to         
the edge of the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo, to have a         
look at the part of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.        
  "Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide, "lead us to             
Shamshevo."                                                                 
                                                    {BK14|CH4 ^paragraph 40}
  Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and           
the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to        
the edge of the forest.                                                     
                                                                            
BK14|CH5                                                                    
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from        
the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following           
the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned         
toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet        
leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.                        
  He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to        
where the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree      
that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously      
to them with his hand.                                                      
  Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant         
was standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest,      
on a downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a      
steep ravine, was a small village and a landowner's house with a            
broken roof. In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well,      
by the pond, over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill      
from the bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred          
yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist.        
Their un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining              
uphill with the carts, and their calls to one another, could be             
clearly heard.                                                              
  "Bwing the prisoner here," said Denisov in a low voice, not taking        
his eyes off the French.                                                    
  A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to                
Denisov. Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these        
and those of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his          
pockets and lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but        
in spite of an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused              
answers, merely assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov          
turned away from him frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his        
own conjectures to him.                                                     
                                                     {BK14|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy,           
now at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village      
and along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.              
  "Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?" said               
Denisov with a merry sparkle in his eyes.                                   
  "It is a very suitable spot," said the esaul.                             
  "We'll send the infantwy down by the swamps," Denisov continued.          
"They'll cweep up to the garden; you'll wide up fwom there with the         
Cossacks"- he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village- "and      
I with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..."                     
  "The hollow is impassable- there's a swamp there," said the esaul.        
"The horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left...."            
                                                    {BK14|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded         
from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared,            
then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French           
voices shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment               
Denisov and the esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought        
they were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the firing and          
shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing something        
red was running through the marsh. The French were evidently firing         
and shouting at him.                                                        
  "Why, that's our Tikhon," said the esaul.                                 
  "So it is! It is!"                                                        
  "The wascal!" said Denisov.                                               
  "He'll get away!" said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.                   
                                                    {BK14|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the stream, plunged        
in so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared           
for an instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet,         
and ran on. The French who had been pursuing him stopped.                   
  "Smart, that!" said the esaul.                                            
  "What a beast!" said Denisov with his former look of vexation. "What      
has he been doing all this time?"                                           
  "Who is he?" asked Petya.                                                 
  "He's our plastun. I sent him to capture a 'tongue.'"                     
                                                    {BK14|CH5 ^paragraph 20}
  "Oh, yes," said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov uttered as      
if he understood it all, though he really did not understand                
anything of it.                                                             
  Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable men in their          
band. He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near the river Gzhat. When            
Denisov had come to Pokrovsk at the beginning of his operations and         
had as usual summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew          
about the French, the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied,      
as all village elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything      
of them. But when Denisov explained that his purpose was to kill the        
French, and asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied      
that some "more-orderers" had really been at their village, but that        
Tikhon Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt with such matters.             
Denisov had Tikhon called and, having praised him for his activity,         
said a few words in the elder's presence about loyalty to the Tsar and      
the country and the hatred of the French that all sons of the               
fatherland should cherish.                                                  
  "We don't do the French any harm," said Tikhon, evidently frightened      
by Denisov's words. "We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you        
know! We killed a score or so of 'more-orderers,' but we did no harm        
else..."                                                                    
  Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite forgotten           
about this peasant, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached         
himself to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it.           
Denisov gave orders to let him do so.                                       
  Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching           
water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking           
and aptitude for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for             
booty and always brought back French clothing and weapons, and when         
told to would bring in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him      
from drudgery and began taking him with him when he went out on             
expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks.                        
                                                    {BK14|CH5 ^paragraph 25}
  Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging        
behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried         
rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf         
uses its teeth, with equal case picking fleas out of its fur or             
crunching thick bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs          
with blows at arm's length, or holding the head of the ax would cut         
thin little pegs or carve spoons. In Denisov's party he held a              
peculiar and exceptional position. When anything particularly               
difficult or nasty had to be done- to push a cart out of the mud            
with one's shoulders, pull a horse out of a swamp by its tail, skin         
it, slink in among the French, or walk more than thirty miles in a          
day- everybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.                                
  "It won't hurt that devil- he's as strong as a horse!" they said          
of him.                                                                     
  Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at           
him and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which          
Tikhon treated only with internal and external applications of              
vodka) was the subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment-      
jokes in which Tikhon readily joined.                                       
  "Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?" the Cossacks would          
banter him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended      
to be angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only      
effect of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he           
seldom brought in prisoners.                                                
  He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found         
more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more            
Frenchmen, and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the              
Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been      
sent by Denisov overnight to Shamshevo to capture a "tongue." But           
whether because he had not been content to take only one Frenchman          
or because he had slept through the night, he had crept by day into         
some bushes right among the French and, as Denisov had witnessed            
from above, had been detected by them.                                      
                                                                            
BK14|CH6                                                                    
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  After talking for some time with the esaul about next day's               
attack, which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he              
seemed to have definitely decided on, Denisov turned his horse and          
rode back.                                                                  
  "Now, my lad, we'll go and get dwy," he said to Petya.                    
  As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped, peering into           
the forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging         
arms, wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan hat, was              
approaching with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his             
shoulder and an ax stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he           
hastily threw something into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its      
floppy brim, and approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled      
and pockmarked face and narrow little eyes beamed with                      
self-satisfied merriment. He lifted his head high and gazed at Denisov      
as if repressing a laugh.                                                   
  "Well, where did you disappear to?" inquired Denisov.                     
  "Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon      
boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.                  
                                                     {BK14|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  "Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well,           
why haven't you taken one?"                                                 
  "Oh, I took one all right," said Tikhon.                                  
  "Where is he?"                                                            
  "You see, I took him first thing at dawn," Tikhon continued,              
spreading out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes.        
"I took him into the forest. Then I see he's no good and think I'll go      
and fetch a likelier one."                                                  
  "You see?... What a wogue- it's just as I thought," said Denisov          
to the esaul. "Why didn't you bwing that one?"                              
                                                    {BK14|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "What was the good of bringing him?" Tikhon interrupted hastily           
and angrily- "that one wouldn't have done for you. As if I don't            
know what sort you want!"                                                   
  "What a bwute you are!... Well?"                                          
  "I went for another one," Tikhon continued, "and I crept like this        
through the wood and lay down." (He suddenly lay down on his stomach        
with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) "One turned up and      
I grabbed him, like this." (He jumped up quickly and lightly.)              
"'Come along to the colonel,' I said. He starts yelling, and                
suddenly there were four of them. They rushed at me with their              
little swords. So I went for them with my ax, this way: 'What are           
you up to?' says I. 'Christ be with you!'" shouted Tikhon, waving           
his arms with an angry scowl and throwing out his chest.                    
  "Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the         
puddles!" said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.                  
  Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained          
from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tikhon's face to the         
esaul's and Denisov's, unable to make out what it all meant.                
                                                    {BK14|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  "Don't play the fool!" said Denisov, coughing angrily. "Why didn't        
you bwing the first one?"                                                   
  Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,      
then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,         
disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called      
Shcherbaty- the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a        
peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.                      
  "Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The            
clothes on him- poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your        
honor! Why, he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't go!' he           
says."                                                                      
  "You are a bwute!" said Denisov. "I wanted to question..."                
  "But I questioned him," said Tikhon. "He said he didn't know much.        
'There are a lot of us,' he says, 'but all poor stuff- only soldiers        
in name,' he says. 'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take          
them all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into        
Denisov's eyes.                                                             
                                                    {BK14|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  "I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes- that'll teach you to play the      
fool!" said Denisov severely.                                               
  "But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd             
never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll             
fetch you any of them you want- three if you like."                         
  "Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the               
watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily.                                 
  Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with         
him and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the             
bushes.                                                                     
  When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and        
smile had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon           
had killed a man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive            
drummer boy and felt a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted        
only a moment. He felt it necessary to hold his head higher, to             
brace himself, and to question the esaul with an air of importance          
about tomorrow's undertaking, that he might not be unworthy of the          
company in which he found himself.                                          
                                                    {BK14|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with      
the news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.      
  Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well,        
tell me about yourself."                                                    
                                                                            
BK14|CH7                                                                    
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow,          
joined his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general              
commanding a large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his      
commission, and especially since he had joined the active army and          
taken part in the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state      
of blissful excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic        
hurry not to miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was          
highly delighted with what he saw and experienced in the army, but          
at the same time it always seemed to him that the really heroic             
exploits were being performed just where he did not happen to be.           
And he was always in a hurry to get where he was not.                       
  When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish          
to send somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to      
be sent that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he      
recalled Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead          
of riding by the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had        
galloped to the advanced line under the fire of the French and had          
there twice fired his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade         
his taking part in any action whatever of Denisov's. That was why           
Petya had blushed and grown confused when Denisov asked him whether he      
could stay. Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest           
Petya had considered he must carry out his instructions strictly and        
return at once. But when he saw the French and saw Tikhon and               
learned that there would certainly be an attack that night, he              
decided, with the rapidity with which young people change their views,      
that the general, whom he had greatly respected till then, was a            
rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tikhon      
a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave them at a        
moment of difficulty.                                                       
  It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and the esaul            
rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be          
seen, and Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the      
glade and were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest             
where the French could not see the smoke. In the passage of the             
small watchhouse a Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some         
mutton. In the room three officers of Denisov's band were converting a      
door into a tabletop. Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to          
be dried, and at once began helping the officers to fix up the              
dinner table.                                                               
  In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the      
table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.      
  Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton      
with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Petya was in an             
ecstatic childish state of love for all men, and consequently of            
confidence that others loved him in the same way.                           
                                                     {BK14|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  "So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?" said he to Denisov.         
"It's all right my staying a day with you?" And not waiting for a           
reply he answered his own question: "You see I was told to find out-        
well, I am finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the         
chief... I don't want a reward... But I want..."                            
  Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head        
and flourishing his arms.                                                   
  "Into the vewy chief..." Denisov repeated with a smile.                   
  "Only, please let me command something, so that I may really              
command..." Petya went on. "What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a      
knife?" he said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a          
piece of mutton.                                                            
  And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.                
                                                    {BK14|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  "Please keep it. I have several like it," said Petya, blushing.           
"Heavens! I was quite forgetting!" he suddenly cried. "I have some          
raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler           
and he has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to           
something sweet. Would you like some?..." and Petya ran out into the        
passage to his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained           
about five pounds of raisins. "Have some, gentlemen, have some!"            
  "You want a coffeepot, don't you?" he asked the esaul. "I bought a        
capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he's very          
honest, that's the chief thing. I'll be sure to send it to you. Or          
perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out- that happens           
sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are"-           
and he showed a bag- "a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap.           
Please take as many as you want, or all if you like...."                    
  Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Petya stopped and      
blushed.                                                                    
  He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that           
was foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered           
the French drummer boy. "It's capital for us here, but what of him?         
Where have they put him? Have they fed him? Haven't they hurt his           
feelings?" he thought. But having caught himself saying too much about      
the flints, he was now afraid to speak out.                                 
  "I might ask," he thought, "but they'll say: 'He's a boy himself and      
so he pities the boy.' I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Will      
it seem odd if I ask?" Petya thought. "Well, never mind!" and               
immediately, blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see          
if they appeared ironical, he said:                                         
                                                    {BK14|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him               
something to eat?... Perhaps..."                                            
  "Yes, he's a poor little fellow," said Denisov, who evidently saw         
nothing shameful in this reminder. "Call him in. His name is Vincent        
Bosse. Have him fetched."                                                   
  "I'll call him," said Petya.                                              
  "Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow," Denisov repeated.             
  Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. He slipped in      
between the officers, came close to Denisov, and said:                      
                                                    {BK14|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  "Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!"           
  And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.                          
  "Bosse! Vincent!" Petya cried, stopping outside the door.                 
  "Who do you want, sir?" asked a voice in the darkness.                    
  Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured         
that day.                                                                   
                                                    {BK14|CH7 ^paragraph 25}
  "Ah, Vesenny?" said a Cossack.                                            
  Vincent, the boy's name, had already been changed by the Cossacks         
into Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the peasants and soldiers.        
In both these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched           
the impression made by the young lad.                                       
  "He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya!                 
Vesenya!- Vesenny!" laughing voices were heard calling to one               
another in the darkness.                                                    
  "He's a smart lad," said an hussar standing near Petya. "We gave him      
something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!"                       
  The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the         
darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door.                             
                                                    {BK14|CH7 ^paragraph 30}
  "Ah, c'est vous!" said Petya. "Voulez-vous manger? N'ayez pas             
peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,"* he added shyly and affectionately,      
touching the boy's hand. "Entrez, entrez."*[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."                                                  
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK14|CH7 ^paragraph 35}
  "Merci, monsieur,"* said the drummer boy in a trembling almost            
childish voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold.      
-                                                                           
  *"Thank you, sir."                                                        
-                                                                           
  There were many things Petya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but        
did not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then      
in the darkness he took the boy's hand and pressed it.                      
                                                    {BK14|CH7 ^paragraph 40}
  "Come in, come in!" he repeated in a gentle whisper. "Oh, what can I      
do for him?" he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in        
first.                                                                      
  When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a distance            
from him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to            
him. But he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it        
would seem ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.                      
                                                                            
BK14|CH8                                                                    
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya's attention from the               
drummer boy, to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given,           
and whom he had had dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept      
with their band and not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya           
had heard in the army many stories of Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery      
and of his cruelty to the French, so from the moment he entered the         
hut Petya did not take his eyes from him, but braced himself up more        
and more and held his head high, that he might not be unworthy even of      
such company.                                                               
  Dolokhov's appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.                     
  Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas         
the Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and                
everything he did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in      
Moscow had worn a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most         
correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a               
Guardsman's padded coat with an Order of St. George at his                  
buttonhole and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took         
off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting        
anyone went up to Denisov and began questioning him about the matter        
in hand. Denisov told him of the designs the large detachments had          
on the transport, of the message Petya had brought, and his own             
replies to both generals. Then he told him all he knew of the French        
detachment.                                                                 
  "That's so. But we must know what troops they are and their               
numbers," said Dolokhov. "It will be necessary to go there. We can't        
start the affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I          
like to work accurately. Here now- wouldn't one of these gentlemen          
like to ride over to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare        
uniform."                                                                   
  "I, I... I'll go with you!" cried Petya.                                  
                                                     {BK14|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  "There's no need for you to go at all," said Denisov, addressing          
Dolokhov, "and as for him, I won't let him go on any account."              
  "I like that!" exclaimed Petya. "Why shouldn't I go?"                     
  "Because it's useless."                                                   
  "Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and          
that's all. You'll take me, won't you?" he said, turning to Dolokhov.       
  "Why not?" Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of           
the French drummer boy. "Have you had that youngster with you long?"        
he asked Denisov.                                                           
                                                    {BK14|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "He was taken today but he knows nothing. I'm keeping him with me."       
  "Yes, and where do you put the others?" inquired Dolokhov.                
  "Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them," shouted            
Denisov, suddenly flushing. "And I say boldly that I have not a single      
man's life on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send          
thirty or thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of staining-      
I speak bluntly- staining the honor of a soldier?"                          
  "That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count        
of sixteen," said Dolokhov with cold irony, "but it's time for you          
to drop it."                                                                
  "Why, I've not said anything! I only say that I'll certainly go with      
you," said Petya shyly.                                                     
                                                    {BK14|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "But for you and me, old fellow, it's time to drop these amenities,"      
continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking          
of this subject which irritated Denisov. "Now, why have you kept            
this lad?" he went on, swaying his head. "Because you are sorry for         
him! Don't we know those 'receipts' of yours? You send a hundred men        
away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So        
isn't it all the same not to send them?"                                    
  The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.        
  "That's not the point. I'm not going to discuss the matter. I do not      
wish to take it on my conscience. You say they'll die. All wight. Only      
not by my fault!"                                                           
  Dolokhov began laughing.                                                  
  "Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if      
they did catch me they'd string me up to an aspen tree, and with all        
your chivalry just the same." He paused. "However, we must get to           
work. Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms          
in it. Well, are you coming with me?" he asked Petya.                       
                                                    {BK14|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "I? Yes, yes, certainly!" cried Petya, blushing almost to tears           
and glancing at Denisov.                                                    
  While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what should be done        
with prisoners, Petya had once more felt awkward and restless; but          
again he had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about.           
"If grown-up, distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and          
right," thought he. "But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine         
that I'll obey him and that he can order me about. I will certainly go      
to the French camp with Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!"                     
  And to all Denisov's persuasions, Petya replied that he too was           
accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that        
he never considered personal danger.                                        
  "For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them         
there are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are            
only two of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go,      
so don't hinder me," said he. "It will only make things worse..."           
                                                                            
BK14|CH9                                                                    
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov            
rode to the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French        
camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended         
into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks         
accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot             
along the road to the bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with            
excitement, rode by his side.                                               
  "If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol,"               
whispered he.                                                               
  "Don't talk Russian," said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper, and at          
that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui        
vive?"* and the click of a musket.                                          
-                                                                           
  *"Who goes there?"                                                        
                                                     {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  The blood rushed to Petya's face and he grasped his pistol.               
  "Lanciers du 6-me,"* replied Dolokhov, neither hastening nor              
slackening his horse's pace.                                                
-                                                                           
  *"Lancers of the 6th Regiment."                                           
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.                       
  "Mot d'ordre."*                                                           
-                                                                           
  *"Password."                                                              
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.                      
  "Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?"* he asked.                       
-                                                                           
  *"Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?"                                       
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
-                                                                           
  "Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not             
replying.                                                                   
  "Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas        
le mot d'ordre..." cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring up and riding            
straight at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici."*         
-                                                                           
  *"When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask him for        
the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is here."                   
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped      
aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a walk.                              
  Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov           
stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The         
man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up        
to Dolokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply         
and in a friendly way that the commander and the officers were              
higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he         
called the landowner's house.                                               
  Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk             
could be heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the               
courtyard of the landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted         
and approached a big blazing campfire, around which sat several men         
talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge      
of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by      
the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.       
  "Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was          
sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.                        
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 30}
  "He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another,             
laughing.                                                                   
  Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of        
Dolokhov's and Petya's steps as they advanced to the fire leading           
their horses.                                                               
  "Bonjour, messieurs!"* said Dolokhov loudly and clearly.                  
-                                                                           
  *"Good day, gentlemen."                                                   
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 35}
-                                                                           
  There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire,        
and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up          
to Dolokhov.                                                                
  "Is that you, Clement?" he asked. "Where the devil...? But, noticing      
his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dolokhov as      
a stranger, asking what he could do for him.                                
  Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake           
their regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether         
they knew anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything,         
and Petya thought the officers were beginning to look at him and            
Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were            
silent.                                                                     
  "If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too              
late," said a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.            
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 40}
  Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on               
farther that night.                                                         
  He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot         
and squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the      
long neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dolokhov and             
again asked to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not        
heard the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe         
which he took from his pocket began asking the officer in how far           
the road before them was safe from Cossacks.                                
  "Those brigands are everywhere," replied an officer from behind           
the fire.                                                                   
  Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers      
such as his companion and himself, "but probably they would not dare        
to attack large detachments?" he added inquiringly. No one replied.         
  "Well, now he'll come away," Petya thought every moment as he             
stood by the campfire listening to the talk.                                
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 45}
  But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and             
began putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the         
battalion, how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about        
the Russian prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said:                  
  "A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would        
be better to shoot such rabble," and burst into loud laughter, so           
strange that Petya thought the French would immediately detect their        
disguise, and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.             
  No one replied a word to Dolokhov's laughter, and a French officer        
whom they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and            
whispered something to a companion. Dolokhov got up and called to           
the soldier who was holding their horses.                                   
  "Will they bring our horses or not?" thought Petya, instinctively         
drawing nearer to Dolokhov.                                                 
  The horses were brought.                                                  
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 50}
  "Good evening, gentlemen," said Dolokhov.                                 
  Petya wished to say "Good night" but could not utter a word. The          
officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was a long time mounting        
his horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at      
a footpace. Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see             
whether or no the French were running after them, but not daring to.        
  Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back across the            
open country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and           
listened. "Do you hear?" he asked. Petya recognized the sound of            
Russian voices and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round          
their campfires. When they had descended to the bridge Petya and            
Dolokhov rode past the sentinel, who without saying a word paced            
morosely up and down it, then they descended into the hollow where the      
Cossacks awaited them.                                                      
  "Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, 'at the first shot at                   
daybreak,'" said Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya seized      
hold of him.                                                                
  "Really!" he cried, "you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how               
splendid! How I love you!"                                                  
                                                    {BK14|CH9 ^paragraph 55}
  "All right, all right!" said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let go of        
him and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya was bending toward        
him and wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his        
horse, and vanished into the darkness.                                      
                                                                            
BK14|CH10                                                                   
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Having returned to the watchman's hut, Petya found Denisov in the         
passage. He was awaiting Petya's return in a state of agitation,            
anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go.                           
  "Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Yes, thank God!" he repeated,                 
listening to Petya's rapturous account. "But, devil take you, I             
haven't slept because of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can         
still get a nap before morning."                                            
  "But... no," said Petya, "I don't want to sleep yet. Besides I            
know myself, if I fall asleep it's finished. And then I am used to not      
sleeping before a battle."                                                  
  He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his            
expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next          
day.                                                                        
  Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went out of           
doors.                                                                      
                                                    {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were        
still falling from the trees. Near the watchman's hut the black shapes      
of the Cossacks' shanties and of horses tethered together could be          
seen. Behind the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their           
horses beside them were discernible, and in the hollow the dying            
campfire gleamed red. Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep;         
here and there, amid the sounds of falling drops and the munching of        
the horses near by, could be heard low voices which seemed to be            
whispering.                                                                 
  Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.      
Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses        
munching their oats. In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which      
he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to        
it.                                                                         
  "Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he,                
sniffing its nostrils and kissing it.                                       
  "Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a      
wagon.                                                                      
  "No, ah... Likhachev- isn't that your name? Do you know I have            
only just come back! We've been into the French camp."                      
                                                   {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride        
but also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his         
life than to act "just anyhow."                                             
  "Well, you should get some sleep now," said the Cossack.                  
  "No, I am used to this," said Petya. "I say, aren't the flints in         
your pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don't you want any? You      
can have some."                                                             
  The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look        
at Petya.                                                                   
  "Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately," said            
Petya. "Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and        
then they're sorry for it afterwards. I don't like that."                   
                                                   {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  "Just so," said the Cossack.                                              
  "Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen          
my saber for me? It's got bl..." (Petya feared to tell a lie, and           
the saber never had been sharpened.) "Can you do it?"                       
  "Of course I can."                                                        
  Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the          
warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat      
on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.          
  "I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya.                                
                                                   {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  "Some are, and some aren't- like us."                                     
  "Well, and that boy?"                                                     
  "Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast         
asleep after his fright. He was that glad!"                                 
  After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the        
sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure               
appeared.                                                                   
  "What are you sharpening?" asked a man coming up to the wagon.            
                                                   {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  "Why, this gentleman's saber."                                            
  "That's right," said the man, whom Petya took to be an hussar.            
"Was the cup left here?"                                                    
  "There, by the wheel!"                                                    
  The hussar took the cup.                                                  
  "It must be daylight soon," said he, yawning, and went away.              
                                                   {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 30}
  Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's          
guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon          
captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under      
it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark      
blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below        
to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had        
come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew      
nor waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom          
where nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be        
the watchman's hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very              
depths of the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be        
the eye of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a          
wagon, but it might very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon         
but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell, he would have          
to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go on falling and never        
reach the bottom. Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachev, who           
was sitting under the wagon, but it might be the kindest, bravest,          
most wonderful, most splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of.        
It might really have been that the hussar came for water and went back      
into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanished- disappeared            
altogether and dissolved into nothingness.                                  
  Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was        
in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.                           
  He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the           
earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were          
swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if        
the clouds were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes          
it seemed as if the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed      
to be rising high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low         
that one could touch it with one's hand.                                    
  Petya's eyes began to close and he swayed a little.                       
  The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed      
and jostled one another. Someone snored.                                    
                                                   {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 35}
  "Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg..." hissed the saber against the                  
whetstone, and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious orchestra playing         
some unknown, sweetly solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha and      
more so than Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about         
it, and so the melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him      
particularly fresh and attractive. The music became more and more           
audible. The melody grew and passed from one instrument to another.         
And what was played was a fugue- though Petya had not the least             
conception of what a fugue is. Each instrument- now resembling a            
violin and now a horn, but better and clearer than violin or horn-          
played its own part, and before it had finished the melody merged with      
another instrument that began almost the same air, and then with a          
third and a fourth; and they all blended into one and again became          
separate and again blended, now into solemn church music, now into          
something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.                              
  "Oh- why, that was in a dream!" Petya said to himself, as he lurched      
forward. "It's in my ears. But perhaps it's music of my own. Well,          
go on, my music! Now!..."                                                   
  He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance,            
sounds fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again        
all mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. "Oh, this is               
delightful! As much as I like and as I like!" said Petya to himself.        
He tried to conduct that enormous orchestra.                                
  "Now softly, softly die away!" and the sounds obeyed him. "Now            
fuller, more joyful. Still more and more joyful!" And from an               
unknown depth rose increasingly triumphant sounds. "Now voices join         
in!" ordered Petya. And at first from afar he heard men's voices and        
then women's. The voices grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and        
Petya listened to their surpassing beauty in awe and joy.                   
  With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from         
the trees, and the hissing of the saber, "Ozheg-zheg-zheg..." and           
again the horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the        
choir but joining in it.                                                    
                                                   {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 40}
  Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all           
the time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no         
one to share it. He was awakened by Likhachev's kindly voice.               
  "It's ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!"      
  Petya woke up.                                                            
  "It's getting light, it's really getting light!" he exclaimed.            
  The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to        
their very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare         
branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket      
and gave it to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and      
sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening          
their saddle girths.                                                        
                                                   {BK14|CH10 ^paragraph 45}
  "And here's the commander," said Likhachev.                               
  Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya,          
gave orders to get ready.                                                   
                                                                            
BK14|CH11                                                                   
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness,              
tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood          
by the watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the              
detachment passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the           
trees in the mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through         
the mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Petya held his horse        
by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face,           
having been bathed in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were          
particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down his spine and his             
whole body pulsed rhythmically.                                             
  "Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing the horses."           
  The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack               
because the saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted.        
Petya put his foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to         
nip his leg, but Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of        
his own weight and, turning to look at the hussars starting in the          
darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov.                                    
  "Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for          
God's sake...!" said he.                                                    
  Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He turned        
to glance at him.                                                           
                                                    {BK14|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  "I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to obey me and not shove      
yourself forward anywhere."                                                 
  He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all the          
way. When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably         
growing light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the           
esaul and the Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had           
all ridden by, Denisov touched his horse and rode down the hill.            
Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses descended with         
their riders into the ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation      
of his body constantly increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter,      
but the mist still hid distant objects. Having reached the valley,          
Denisov looked back and nodded to a Cossack beside him.                     
  "The signal!" said he.                                                    
  The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the         
tramp of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from               
various sides, and then more shots.                                         
  At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya lashed his      
horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denisov who      
shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was          
fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge.      
Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the              
bridge he collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he             
galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were             
running from right to left across the road. One of them fell in the         
mud under his horse's feet.                                                 
                                                   {BK14|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the         
midst of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped up, and the      
first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman,      
clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.                 
  "Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving rein to his         
excited horse he galloped forward along the village street.                 
  He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged        
Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road,        
were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking          
Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red             
face, had been defending himself against the hussars. When Petya            
galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen. "Too late again!"             
flashed through Petya's mind and he galloped on to the place from           
which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard of      
the landowner's house he had visited the night before with Dolokhov.        
The French were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden      
thickly overgrown with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who           
crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the             
gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint,           
shouting to his men. "Go round! Wait for the infantry!" he exclaimed        
as Petya rode up to him.                                                    
  "Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment      
galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the        
smoke was thickest.                                                         
  A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others          
plashed against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after         
Petya into the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke        
some of the French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes          
to meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the             
pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead of               
holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly and                  
strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle. His      
horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering in the          
morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the           
wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked rapidly          
though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull.       
                                                   {BK14|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the          
house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that        
they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay         
motionless with outstretched arms.                                          
  "Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet            
Denisov who was riding toward him.                                          
  "Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the                  
unmistakably lifeless attitude- very familiar to him- in which Petya's      
body was lying.                                                             
  "Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these words          
afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who         
were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. "We won't take              
them!" he called out to Denisov.                                            
  Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with          
trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained,                     
mud-bespattered face which had already gone white.                          
                                                   {BK14|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  "I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!"      
he recalled Petya's words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise        
at the sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned             
away, walked to the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.                    
  Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov was           
Pierre Bezukhov.                                                            
                                                                            
BK14|CH12                                                                   
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been      
issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners          
among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party           
was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it         
had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled      
the first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other         
half had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had      
marched in front of the prisoners was left; they had all                    
disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them          
during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous          
baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a        
cavalry baggage train.                                                      
  From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in         
three columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder          
that Pierre had noticed at their first halting place after leaving          
Moscow had now reached the utmost limit.                                    
  The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead        
horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments             
continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again         
lagging behind it.                                                          
  Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the        
soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run             
headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and          
abused each other for their causeless panic.                                
  These three groups traveling together- the cavalry stores, the            
convoy of prisoners, and Junot's baggage train- still constituted a         
separate and united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly            
melting away.                                                               
                                                    {BK14|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred           
and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been      
captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured      
or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers         
from Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned            
that a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to         
the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had        
been shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoon                 
belonging to the marshal had been found in his possession.                  
  The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three          
hundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a             
hundred now remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort      
than even the cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood that      
the saddles and Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold           
and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally cold and         
hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case      
the order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but            
revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition          
they themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the        
prisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treated            
them with particular moroseness and severity.                               
  At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the         
prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores,            
several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away,      
but were recaptured by the French and shot.                                 
  The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer               
prisoners should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been        
abandoned. All who could walk went together, and after the third stage      
Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that        
had chosen Karataev for its master.                                         
  On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill with        
the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he         
grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know        
why, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an         
effort to go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning         
with which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when      
he smelled the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than          
before, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him.              
                                                   {BK14|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his              
intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is             
created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the                 
satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises         
not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last          
three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory      
truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that          
as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely             
free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack         
freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and        
that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed          
of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now,              
sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while         
the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes      
he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet            
that were covered with sores- his footgear having long since fallen to      
pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife- of his own         
free will as it had seemed to him- he had been no more free than now        
when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself        
subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he                
scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and                
scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing,           
the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used instead of salt was         
even pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm walking          
in the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that        
devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard to      
bear was his feet.                                                          
  After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the      
campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when          
everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,        
walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more         
terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,      
but thought of other things.                                                
  Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the      
saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to         
another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows             
superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain           
limit.                                                                      
  He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who           
lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did      
not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would         
soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about             
himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the           
future, the more independent of that position in which he found             
himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and              
imaginings that came to him.                                                
                                                                            
BK14|CH13                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill         
along the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the              
roughness of the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd         
around him and then again at his feet. The former and the latter            
were alike familiar and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran         
merrily along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its               
agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along        
on three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at           
the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker          
than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different           
animals- from men to horses- in various stages of decomposition; and        
as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog could eat all        
it wanted.                                                                  
  It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment      
it might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began          
raining harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed           
the water, which ran along the ruts in streams.                             
  Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps        
in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally                  
addressing the rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt          
harder!"                                                                    
  It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and        
deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and          
comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction            
from a conversation with Karataev the day before.                           
  At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying             
campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was             
burning better. There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up- head and      
all- with his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers      
in his effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre        
knew. It was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually      
free of his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the          
fire and heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his             
pathetic face brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at      
his heart. His feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he           
wished to go away, but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down,        
trying not to look at Platon.                                               
                                                    {BK14|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  "Well, how are you?" he asked.                                            
  "How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death,"          
replied Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun.                 
  "And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale                 
emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his eyes, " you            
see, brother..."                                                            
  Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told          
it to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially           
joyful emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that         
tale as to something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently          
felt as he told it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was        
of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with his           
family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with a companion- a            
rich merchant.                                                              
  Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning         
his companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained      
knife was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried,              
knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as        
Karataev put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.                      
                                                   {BK14|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  "And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten        
years or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict,               
submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God           
for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we            
are, with the old man among them. And they began telling what each was      
suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One told how he         
had taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house on         
fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had done nothing. So      
they asked the old man: 'What are you being punished for, Daddy?'- 'I,      
my dear brothers,' said he, 'am being punished for my own and other         
men's sins. But I have not killed anyone or taken anything that was         
not mine, but have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant,        
my dear brothers, and had much property. 'And he went on to tell            
them all about it in due order. 'I don't grieve for myself,' he             
says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my old          
wife and the children,' and the old man began to weep. Now it happened      
that in the group was the very man who had killed the other                 
merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When, and in what         
month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache. So he comes      
up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet! 'You are           
perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true, lads, that      
this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for nothing! I,'      
he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you      
were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's sake!'"             
  Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and          
he drew the logs together.                                                  
  "And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners          
in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears.          
Well, and what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his         
face brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he         
now had to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his      
story: "What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to         
the authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great          
sinner), 'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let           
him suffer because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down      
and the papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and      
while they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in        
the papers all in due form- the authorities I mean- time passed. The        
affair reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to           
set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had been             
awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the old man.          
'Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A      
paper has come from the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here         
Karataev's lower jaw trembled, "but God had already forgiven him- he        
was dead! That's how it was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat      
for a long time silent, gazing before him with a smile.                     
  And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story          
itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that        
lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of        
that joy.                                                                   
                                                                            
BK14|CH14                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  "A vos places!"* suddenly cried a voice.                                  
-                                                                           
  *"To your places."                                                        
-                                                                           
  A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something          
joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the      
prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left         
came smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the                 
prisoners at a trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension         
people feel at the approach of those in authority. The prisoners            
thronged together and were pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.       
                                                    {BK14|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  "The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!" and hardly had         
the sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses        
rattled by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat        
with a tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of      
the marshals. His eye fell on Pierre's large and striking figure,           
and in the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre          
thought he detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.         
  The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with      
a red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several            
officers formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their         
faces all looked excited and worried.                                       
  "What did he say? What did he say?" Pierre heard them ask.                
  While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in      
a crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he had not yet seen that              
morning. He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On      
his face, besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday          
while telling the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently,             
there was now an expression of quiet solemnity.                             
  Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with      
tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say                 
something to him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself.          
He made as if he did not notice that look and moved hastily away.           
                                                   {BK14|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round.                
Karataev was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch          
tree and two Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look      
round again but went limping up the hill.                                   
  From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the sound of a         
shot. Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that        
he had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to      
Smolensk- a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And        
he again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one        
of whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale,           
and in the expression on their faces- one of them glanced timidly at        
Pierre- there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of      
the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and        
remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt             
while drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.                
  Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog began to             
howl. "What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?" thought Pierre.             
  His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided           
looking back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog         
was howling, just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their      
faces.                                                                      
                                                                            
BK14|CH15                                                                   
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage train stopped        
at the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the             
campfires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh,           
lay down with his back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He         
again slept as he had done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.        
  Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or            
another, gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same              
thoughts that had been expressed in his dream at Mozhaysk.                  
  "Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and        
that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in               
consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and        
more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings,        
in innocent sufferings."                                                    
  "Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind.                                        
  And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly           
old man who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a         
bit," said the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was           
alive- a vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface         
consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved      
and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one,             
sometimes one dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and         
occupy as much space as possible, but others striving to do the same        
compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.        
                                                    {BK14|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  "That is life," said the old teacher.                                     
  "How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not        
know it before?"                                                            
  "God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect      
Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from           
the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now,             
Karataev has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?"      
said the teacher.                                                           
  "Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.       
  He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a           
Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting         
a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and           
his sinewy, hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned         
the ramrod. His brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly           
visible by the glow of the charcoal.                                        
                                                   {BK14|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  "It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a             
soldier who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!"                          
  And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned          
away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier           
the Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting            
something with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the         
blue-gray dog, sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.                
  "Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not           
finish.                                                                     
  Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his              
fancy- of the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of        
the shot heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty             
faces of the two Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and         
smoking gun, and of Karataev's absence at this halt- and he was on the      
point of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that          
instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind of a            
summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the             
veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the      
day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes,              
seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories          
of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into             
water so that it closed over his head.                                      
  Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid               
firing. French soldiers were running past him.                              
                                                   {BK14|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  "The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of        
Russians surrounded Pierre.                                                 
  For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him.        
All around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.                          
  "Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping,      
as they embraced Cossacks and hussars.                                      
  The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered         
them clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he         
sat among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier      
who approached him, and kissed him, weeping.                                
  Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd of        
disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had             
happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed          
Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched            
them with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent.          
On the opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the                 
prisoners and marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.       
                                                   {BK14|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  "How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack.                                   
  "The second hundred," replied the Cossack.                                
  "Filez, filez!"* Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this                
expression from the French, and when his eyes met those of the              
prisoners they flashed with a cruel light.                                  
-                                                                           
  *"Get along, get along!"                                                  
                                                   {BK14|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
-                                                                           
  Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some            
Cossacks who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had      
been dug in the garden.                                                     
                                                                            
BK14|CH16                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight      
of the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men               
freezing, or roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while           
carriages with people dressed in furs continued to drive past,              
carrying away the property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings,      
and dukes; but the process of the flight and disintegration of the          
French army went on essentially as before.                                  
  From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-three thousand           
men not reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but      
pillage) was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five      
thousand had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding           
terms of the progression could be determined mathematically. The            
French army melted away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to        
Vyazma, from Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and         
from the Berezina to Vilna- independently of the greater or lesser          
intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any          
other particular conditions. Beyond Vyazma the French army instead          
of moving in three columns huddled together into one mass, and so went      
on to the end. Berthier wrote to his Emperor (we know how far               
commanding officers allow themselves to diverge from the truth in           
describing the condition of an army) and this is what he said:              
-                                                                           
  I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the          
various corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages        
of the last two or three days' march. They are almost disbanded.            
Scarcely a quarter of the soldiers remain with the standards of             
their regiments, the others go off by themselves in different               
directions hoping to find food and escape discipline. In general            
they regard Smolensk as the place where they hope to recover. During        
the last few days many of the men have been seen to throw away their        
cartridges and their arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your        
ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your Majesty's service               
demands that the army should be rallied at Smolensk and should first        
of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted cavalry,              
unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer in            
proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out            
with hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as well as a few days'         
rest. Many have died last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This         
state of things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear            
that unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer be         
under control in case of an engagement.                                     
  November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.                                   
                                                    {BK14|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them a promised land,      
the French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own        
stores, and when everything had been plundered fled farther.                
  They all went without knowing whither or why they were going.             
Still less did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any        
orders to him. But still he and those about him retained their old          
habits: wrote commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day;            
called one another sire, mon cousin, prince d'Eckmuhl, roi de               
Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper,         
nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out,           
and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or              
Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had            
done much evil for which they had now to pay. And though they               
pretended to be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of         
himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself.                    
                                                                            
BK14|CH17                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign        
from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian         
blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them      
occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his               
whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into      
a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to      
escape runs straight into his opponent's arms.                              
  At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road,              
Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they            
reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell        
tight- and often thinking they were escaping ran right into the             
Russians.                                                                   
  Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit        
and the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of             
approximately ascertaining the enemy's position- by cavalry                 
scouting- was not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent           
and rapid change of position by each army, even what information was        
obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was received one           
day that the enemy had been in a certain position the day before, by        
the third day when something could have been done, that army was            
already two days' march farther on and in quite another position.           
  One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk there were           
several different roads available for the French, and one would have        
thought that during their stay of four days they might have learned         
where the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan        
and undertaken something new. But after a four days' halt the mob,          
with no maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten            
track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the old- the          
worst- road, through Krasnoe and Orsha.                                     
  Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French              
separated in their flight and spread out over a distance of                 
twenty-four hours. In front of them all fled the Emperor, then the          
kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take         
the road to the right beyond the Dnieper- which was the only                
reasonable thing for him to do- themselves turned to the right and          
came out onto the highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of             
blindman's buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy        
unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped short from the      
sudden fright, but then they resumed their flight, abandoning their         
comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days separate              
portions of the French army- first Murat's (the vice-king's), then          
Davout's, and then Ney's- ran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian      
army. They abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage,        
their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the             
Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.                       
                                                    {BK14|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of      
Smolensk which were in nobody's way, because despite the unfortunate        
plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor      
against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of         
ten thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one thousand men      
left, having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having          
crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.                   
  From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna, still               
playing at blindman's buff with the pursuing army. At the Berezina          
they again became disorganized, many were drowned and many                  
surrendered, but those who got across the river fled farther. Their         
supreme chief donned a fur coat and, having seated himself in a             
sleigh, galloped on alone, abandoning his companions. The others who        
could do so drove away too, leaving those who could not to surrender        
or die.                                                                     
                                                                            
BK14|CH18                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which            
they did all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they           
turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the           
army, none of the movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might        
have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the                 
historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to the will of           
one man, would have found it impossible to make the story of the            
retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have been written      
by the historians about this campaign, and everywhere are described         
Napoleon's arrangements, the maneuvers, and his profound plans which        
guided the army, as well as the military genius shown by his marshals.      
  The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a          
well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along          
which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him- this unnecessary retreat along a      
devastated road- is explained to us as being due to profound                
considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for his         
retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is              
described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle      
and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick      
and said:                                                                   
  "J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general,"* but      
nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the         
scattered fragments of the army he left behind.                             
-                                                                           
  *"I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the             
general."                                                                   
                                                    {BK14|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
-                                                                           
  Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals,                
especially of Ney- a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he          
made his way by night around through the forest and across the Dnieper      
and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths      
of his men.                                                                 
  And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic      
army is presented to us by the historians as something great and            
characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in        
ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is      
taught to be ashamed of- even that act finds justification in the           
historians' language.                                                       
  When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of              
historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly              
contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians      
produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems,          
excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing      
is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.       
  "C'est grand!"* say the historians, and there no longer exists            
either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good,        
not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of      
some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a      
warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his           
comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que      
c'est grand,*[2] and his soul is tranquil.                                  
                                                   {BK14|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  *"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! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule      
il n'y a qu'un pas.                                                         
                                                   {BK14|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  *"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.                                 
                                                                            
BK14|CH19                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign        
of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,            
dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is        
that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three           
armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered             
French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the        
historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop the French,          
to cut them off, and capture them all?                                      
  How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than      
the French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose        
when it had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim           
was to capture them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us         
that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not          
beat them? How could that happen?                                           
  History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions      
says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov,         
and this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers...       
  But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were        
guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried           
and punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and          
others were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still                  
incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what it        
was at Krasnoe and at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior           
forces), the French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not      
captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.                           
  The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military            
historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is               
unfounded, for we know that he could not restrain the troops from           
attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.                                           
                                                    {BK14|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  Why was the Russian army- which with inferior forces had withstood        
the enemy in full strength at Borodino- defeated at Krasnoe and the         
Berezina by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was               
numerically superior?                                                       
  If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing         
Napoleon and his marshals- and that aim was not merely frustrated           
but all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled- then            
this last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the         
French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered            
victorious by Russian historians.                                           
  The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims        
of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical          
rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit      
that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for           
Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.                                           
  But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a          
conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French             
victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series of      
Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the         
liberation of their country.                                                
  The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the                
historians studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns           
and the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth,            
have attributed to this last period of the war of 1812 an aim that          
never existed, namely that of cutting off and capturing Napoleon            
with his marshals and his army.                                             
                                                   {BK14|CH19 ^paragraph 10}
  There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have         
been senseless and its attainment quite impossible.                         
  It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon's                    
disorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that      
is to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what was           
the use of performing various operations on the French who were             
running away as fast as they possibly could?                                
  Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men        
whose whole energy was directed to flight.                                  
  Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's own              
troops in order to destroy the French army, which without external          
interference was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its          
path was not blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than      
it actually did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original        
army.                                                                       
  Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the        
Emperor, kings, and dukes- whose capture would have been in the             
highest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit            
diplomatists of the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized.         
Still more senseless would have been the wish to capture army corps of      
the French, when our own army had melted away to half before                
reaching Krasnoe and a whole division would have been needed to convoy      
the corps of prisoners, and when our men were not always getting            
full rations and the prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger.      
                                                   {BK14|CH19 ^paragraph 15}
  All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon           
and his army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving      
out of his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had              
planted, should run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The            
only thing to be said in excuse of that gardener would be that he           
was very angry. But not even that could be said for those who drew          
up this project, for it was not they who had suffered from the              
trampled beds.                                                              
  But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would        
have been senseless, it was impossible.                                     
  It was impossible first because- as experience shows that a               
three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with        
the plans- the probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein          
effecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to      
be tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when        
he received the plan remarked that diversions planned over great            
distances do not yield the desired results.                                 
  Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with         
which Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than        
the Russians possessed would have been required.                            
  Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off"         
has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army.          
To cut off an army- to bar its road- is quite impossible, for there is      
always plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when          
nothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convince              
themselves by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only        
possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it      
is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men        
can only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the rules        
of strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops          
quite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death by        
hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.                  
                                                   {BK14|CH19 ^paragraph 20}
  Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the           
world began has a war been fought under such conditions as those            
that obtained in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the           
French strained its strength to the utmost and could not have done          
more without destroying itself.                                             
  During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe          
it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to        
the population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of         
the army without a battle.                                                  
  And it is of this period of the campaign- when the army lacked boots      
and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and         
was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees        
of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and         
the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be           
maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where             
discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for          
months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and         
cold, when half the army perished in a single month- it is of this          
period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich         
should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to        
another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than                 
knee-deep in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and        
"cut off" the French and so on and so on.                                   
  The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should            
have been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not      
to blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed            
that they should do what was impossible.                                    
  All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between        
the facts and the historical accounts only arises because the               
historians dealing with the matter have written the history of the          
beautiful words and sentiments of various generals, and not the             
history of the events.                                                      
                                                   {BK14|CH19 ^paragraph 25}
  To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do        
their surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but           
the question of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals         
and in graves does not even interest them, for it does not come within      
the range of their investigation.                                           
  Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans      
and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who         
took a direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed         
insoluble easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.      
  The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in      
the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it           
was senseless and unattainable.                                             
  The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion.            
That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as the French           
ran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight.            
Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying      
the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was           
following the French, ready to use its strength in case their movement      
stopped.                                                                    
  The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the      
experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a          
menace than to strike the running animal on the head.                       
                                                                            
BK15                                                                        
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                            BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13                         
                                                                            
BK15|CH1                                                                    
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror:                 
substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it      
is a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this           
horror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual          
wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes         
heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.       
  After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike felt          
this. Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing         
cloud of death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the          
face. They carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and           
painful contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street,      
a summons to dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, or           
worse still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an             
insult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary          
quiet in which they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful          
choir that still resounded in their imagination, and hindered their         
gazing into those mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant           
had opened out before them.                                                 
  Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and             
pain. They spoke little even to one another, and when they did it           
was of very unimportant matters.                                            
  Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of      
a future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did      
they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them         
that what they had lived through and experienced could not be               
expressed in words, and that any reference to the details of his            
life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been      
accomplished before their eyes.                                             
  Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of               
everything that might lead up to the subject- this halting on all           
sides at the boundary of what they might not mention- brought before        
their minds with still greater purity and clearness what they were          
both feeling.                                                               
                                                     {BK15|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete        
joy. Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent             
arbiter of her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was      
the first to be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which      
she had dwelt for the first fortnight. She received letters from her        
relations to which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas      
had been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came to               
Yaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs and with advice        
and suggestions that they should return to Moscow to the house on           
the Vozdvizhenka Street, which had remained uninjured and needed            
only slight repairs. Life did not stand still and it was necessary          
to live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to emerge from the realm          
of secluded contemplation in which she had lived till then, and             
sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone, yet the        
cares of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yielded          
to them. She went through the accounts with Alpatych, conferred with        
Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and made preparations           
for the journey to Moscow.                                                  
  Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making      
preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.                        
  Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her to            
Moscow, and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw           
their daughter losing strength every day and thought that a change          
of scene and the advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.            
  "I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed to      
her. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room,          
with difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation            
rather than of sorrow.                                                      
  After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her          
grief, Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself,               
sitting huddled up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and      
twisting something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing              
intently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This          
solitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in absolute need of        
it. As soon as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her position      
and expression, and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting      
impatiently for the intruder to go.                                         
                                                    {BK15|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that        
on which- with a terrible questioning too great for her strength-           
her spiritual gaze was fixed.                                               
  One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressed        
in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a         
knot, was crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously        
crumpling and smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at         
a corner of the door.                                                       
  She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone- to the other        
side of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never           
before thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and         
improbable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible            
than this side of life, where everything was either emptiness and           
desolation or suffering and indignity.                                      
  She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine        
him otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he         
had been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.                        
  She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own,        
and sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.                   
                                                    {BK15|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning        
his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his      
shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and         
a wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs              
twitches just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is            
struggling with terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does he         
have that pain? What does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thought           
Natasha. He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to         
speak seriously:                                                            
  "One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself forever          
to a suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he looked           
searchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to        
think what she would say. She said: "This can't go on- it won't. You        
will get well- quite well."                                                 
  She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what      
she had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at             
those words and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in         
that protracted gaze.                                                       
  "I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would be                
dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because      
it would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently.      
He thought it would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live        
and feared death. And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not        
say what I meant. I thought quite differently. Had I said what I            
thought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to die          
continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared with          
what I am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No,        
he did not and never will know it. And now it will never, never be          
possible to put it right." And now he again seemed to be saying the         
same words to her, only in her imagination Natasha this time gave           
him a different answer. She stopped him and said: "Terrible for you,        
but not for me! You know that for me there is nothing in life but you,      
and to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me," and he            
took her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible             
evening four days before his death. And in her imagination she said         
other tender and loving words which she might have said then but            
only spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..." she said,           
convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperate      
effort...                                                                   
  She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in         
her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.      
Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again            
with a strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And         
now, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at        
the instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing          
itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her      
ears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a      
frightened look on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.        
                                                    {BK15|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  "Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange,             
excited look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she        
finished with a sob.                                                        
                                                                            
BK15|CH2                                                                    
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling         
a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of           
them- her father, mother, and Sonya- were so near to her, so familiar,      
so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult          
to the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not         
merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard      
Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not          
grasp them.                                                                 
  "What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live      
their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha.               
  As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of        
her mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had      
evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were           
choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and         
burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round          
face.                                                                       
  "Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a          
child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost        
fell into it, covering his face with his hands.                             
  Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole          
being. Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache          
as if something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But           
the pain was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the          
oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in life.           
The sight of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that         
she heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and         
her own grief.                                                              
                                                     {BK15|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to           
her mother's door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came        
out from that room and taking Natasha by the arm said something to          
her. Natasha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid              
steps, pausing at the door for an instant as if struggling with             
herself, and then ran to her mother.                                        
  The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward            
position, stretching out and beating her head against the wall.             
Sonya and the maids were holding her arms.                                  
  "Natasha! Natasha!..." cried the countess. "It's not true... it's         
not true... He's lying... Natasha!" she shrieked, pushing those around      
her away. "Go away, all of you; it's not true! Killed!... ha, ha,           
ha!... It's not true!"                                                      
  Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother,            
embraced her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face      
toward herself, and clung to her.                                           
  "Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy," she kept on          
whispering, not pausing an instant.                                         
                                                    {BK15|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her,         
demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her           
mother's dress.                                                             
  "My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!..." she whispered              
incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her         
own irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.         
  The countess pressed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and            
became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed            
swiftness, glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natasha began to         
press her daughter's head with all her strength. Then she turned            
toward her daughter's face which was wincing with pain and gazed            
long at it.                                                                 
  "Natasha, you love me?" she said in a soft trustful whisper.              
"Natasha, you would not deceive me? You'll tell me the whole truth?"        
  Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look             
there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.                 
                                                    {BK15|CH2 ^paragraph 15}
  "My darling Mummy!" she repeated, straining all the power of her          
love to find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that         
crushed her mother.                                                         
  And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing          
to believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in           
the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.           
  Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the      
next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother.         
Her persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the          
countess every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling           
her to life.                                                                
  During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few             
minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and            
closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead              
creak. The countess was sitting up in bed and speaking softly.              
  "How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won't you have some          
tea?" Natasha went up to her. "You have improved in looks and grown         
more manly," continued the countess, taking her daughter's hand.            
                                                    {BK15|CH2 ^paragraph 20}
  "Mamma! What are you saying..."                                           
  "Natasha, he is no more, no more!"                                        
  And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first      
time.                                                                       
                                                                            
BK15|CH3                                                                    
  CHAPTER III                                                               
-                                                                           
  Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried          
to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able          
to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks            
Natasha remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge      
chair in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her             
incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones           
soothed her mother.                                                         
  The mother's wounded spirit could not could not heal. Petya's             
death had torn from her half her life. When the news of Petya's             
death had come she had been a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a      
month later she left her room a listless old woman taking no                
interest in life. But the same blow that almost killed the countess,        
this second blow, restored Natasha to life.                                 
  A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is          
like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep           
wound may heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike      
can yet heal completely only as the result of a vital force from            
within.                                                                     
  Natasha's wound healed in that way. She thought her life was              
ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the         
essence of life- love- was still active within her. Love awoke and          
so did life.                                                                
  Prince Andrew's last days had bound Princess Mary and Natasha             
together; this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another.         
Princess Mary put off her departure, and for three weeks looked             
after Natasha as if she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed        
in her mother's bedroom had strained Natasha's physical strength.           
                                                     {BK15|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever, Princess Mary        
took her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natasha lay      
down, but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away        
she called her back.                                                        
  "I don't want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little."                        
  "You are tired- try to sleep."                                            
  "No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me."           
  "She is much better. She spoke so well today," said Princess Mary.        
                                                    {BK15|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned        
Princess Mary's face.                                                       
  "Is she like him?" thought Natasha. "Yes, like and yet not like. But      
she is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me.         
What is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind           
like? What does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!"                  
  "Mary," she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary's hand to herself,        
"Mary, you mustn't think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love            
you! Let us be quite, quite friends."                                       
  And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making      
Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her               
feelings.                                                                   
  From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only      
between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha.            
They were continually kissing and saying tender things to one               
another and spent most of their time together. When one went out the        
other became restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt        
more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself      
when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them;      
an exclusive feeling of life being possible only in each other's            
presence.                                                                   
                                                    {BK15|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were           
already in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They        
spoke most of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her                
childhood, of her mother, her father, and her daydreams; and                
Natasha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly              
turned away from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry          
of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess          
Mary by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a         
side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She did not think          
of applying submission and self-abnegation to her own life, for she         
was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood and loved in          
another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess             
Mary, listening to Natasha's tales of childhood and early youth, there      
also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life: belief      
in life and its enjoyment.                                                  
  Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they      
thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him        
had the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without         
being conscious of it.                                                      
  Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all      
talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was        
suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,      
and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm         
carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her        
drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed        
to her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.               
  One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.        
Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and         
then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.       
  Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she          
called again- though she could hear Dunyasha coming- called her in the      
deep chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, sing, and              
listened attentively to herself.                                            
                                                    {BK15|CH3 ^paragraph 20}
  She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the          
layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable,        
delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking         
root would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed        
her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound         
had begun to heal from within.                                              
  At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count        
insisted on Natasha's going with her to consult the doctors.                
                                                                            
BK15|CH4                                                                    
  CHAPTER IV                                                                
-                                                                           
  After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold      
back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy         
and so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the           
Russians who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a            
battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the          
French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke      
down, and the information received of the movements of the French           
was never reliable.                                                         
  The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous           
marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not        
go any faster.                                                              
  To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only        
necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not          
losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and        
less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that             
place a hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty             
thousand.                                                                   
  The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our        
army as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference         
was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of         
destruction as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen            
were left behind in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind         
were among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage of              
Napoleon's army was the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing          
proof of this is the corresponding decrease of the Russian army.            
  Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the        
movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian      
army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at          
Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of        
our army.                                                                   
                                                     {BK15|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of         
the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident,          
another reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself        
to Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French.           
The road the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our           
troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to cover.          
Only by following at some distance could one cut across the zigzag          
path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals      
meant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches,         
whereas the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To            
that end Kutuzov's activity was directed during the whole campaign          
from Moscow to Vilna- not casually or intermittently but so                 
consistently that he never once deviated from it.                           
  Kutuzov felt and knew- not by reasoning or science but with the           
whole of his Russian being- what every Russian soldier felt: that           
the French were beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven        
out; but at the same time he like the soldiers realized all the             
hardship of this march, the rapidity of which was unparalleled for          
such a time of the year.                                                    
  But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian           
army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody,           
and for some reason to capture a king or a duke- it seemed that now-        
when any battle must be horrible and senseless- was the very time to        
fight and conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when      
one after another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with      
those soldiers- ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved- who        
within a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half           
their number, and who at the best if the flight continued would have        
to go a greater distance than they had already traversed, before            
they reached the frontier.                                                  
  This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow,        
and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians             
stumbled on the French army.                                                
  So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three        
French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen        
thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous           
encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob        
of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three      
days.                                                                       
                                                    {BK15|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and          
so," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the                  
disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the        
French crowds that were running past, and demanded reinforcements           
which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and      
hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as            
best they could, and continued their flight.                                
  Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the         
commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found            
when he was wanted- that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche* as he        
styled himself- who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys        
demanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was          
ordered to do.                                                              
-                                                                           
  *Knight without fear and without reproach.                                
-                                                                           
                                                    {BK15|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  "I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and      
pointing out the French to the cavalry.                                     
  And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could        
scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to          
them- that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,              
frost-bitten, and starving- and the column that had been presented          
to them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been             
anxious to do.                                                              
  At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several               
hundred cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputed        
as to who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their             
achievement- though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon,          
or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one            
another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.                  
  These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of        
the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes      
and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable        
deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the      
campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he               
thought nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from      
the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at               
Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon was        
there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he had      
an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so           
on, and so on.                                                              
  Not only did his contempories, carried away by their passions,            
talk in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as      
grand, while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty,                
dissolute, weak old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite-      
a sort of puppet useful only because he had a Russian name.                 
                                                                            
BK15|CH5                                                                    
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The            
Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written        
by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a           
cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by         
his blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian            
army of the glory of complete victory over the French.*                     
-                                                                           
  *History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and                   
reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe,        
by Bogdanovich.                                                             
-                                                                           
  Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian        
mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary            
individuals who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their            
personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish            
such men for discerning the higher laws.                                    
                                                     {BK15|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon-            
that most insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in         
exile, showed human dignity- Napoleon is the object of adulation and        
enthusiasm; he is grand. But Kutuzov- the man who from the beginning        
to the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or          
deed from Borodino to Vilna, presented an example exceptional in            
history of self-sacrifice and a present conciousness of the future          
importance of what was happening- Kutuzov seems to them something           
indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year            
1812 they always seem a little ashamed.                                     
  And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose          
activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be      
difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the         
will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find          
an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being          
so completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov's efforts were      
directed in 1812.                                                           
  Kutuzov never talked of "forty centuries looking down from the            
Pyramids," of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what      
he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said           
nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the          
simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most           
ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de         
Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with          
generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who          
tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza          
bridge galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for having           
caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: "How was it you promised        
not to abandon Moscow without a battle?" Kutuzov replied: "And I shall      
not abandon Moscow without a battle," though Moscow was then already        
abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that        
Ermolov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied:      
"Yes, I was just saying so myself," though a moment before he had said      
quite the contrary. What did it matter to him- who then alone amid a        
senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what        
was happening- what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed      
the calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it          
matter to him who was appointed chief of the artillery.                     
  Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man- who by        
experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the         
words serving as their expression are not what move people- use             
quite meaningless words that happened to enter his head.                    
  But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the           
whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single      
aim toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite      
of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his      
real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be               
understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his      
disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle      
of Borodino was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in           
his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone            
said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to         
Lauriston's proposal of peace, he said: There can be no peace, for          
such is the people's will. He alone during the retreat of the French        
said that all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being                
accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy          
must be offered "a golden bridge"; that neither the Tarutino, the           
Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that we must keep some      
force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a         
single Russian for ten Frenchmen.                                           
                                                    {BK15|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakcheev        
to please the Emperor, he alone- incurring thereby the Emperor's            
displeasure- said in Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier        
is useless and harmful.                                                     
  Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of           
the events. His actions- without the smallest deviation- were all           
directed to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his            
strength for conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3)          
to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the              
sufferings of our people and of our army.                                   
  This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was "Patience and Time,"         
this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodino, investing           
the preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov           
who before the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be             
lost, he alone, in contradiction to everyone else, declared till his        
death that Borodino was a victory, despite the assurance of generals        
that the battle was lost and despite the fact that for an army to have      
to retire after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during         
the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless then,           
should not be fought, and that a new war should not be begun nor the        
frontiers of Russia crossed.                                                
  It is easy now to understand the significance of these events- if         
only we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that      
existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals- for the events and        
results now lie before us.                                                  
  But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general             
opinion, so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the        
events that in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?             
                                                    {BK15|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                                               
                                                                            
BK15|CH6                                                                    
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle      
of Krasnoe. Toward evening- after much disputing and many mistakes          
made by generals who did not go to their proper places, and after           
adjutants had been sent about with counterorders- when it had become        
plain that the enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and      
would be no battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither         
his headquarters had that day been transferred.                             
  The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump         
little white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented           
generals who whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the      
road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven         
thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at campfires.            
Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with            
talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been able to get         
hold of, were standing in the road beside a long row of unharnessed         
French guns. At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of          
talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on Kutuzov who, wearing a white         
cap with a red band and a padded overcoat that bulged on his round          
shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his white horse. One of           
the generals was reporting to him where the guns and prisoners had          
been captured.                                                              
  Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general         
was saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he           
gazed attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a           
specially wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by              
frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and          
festering eyes.                                                             
  One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them,         
one of whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of        
raw flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial        
in the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the                  
malevolent expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the            
soldier with the sores immediately turned away and went on with what        
he was doing.                                                               
  Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He                
puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head.      
At another spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a           
Frenchman on the shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly            
manner, and Kutuzov with the same expression on his face again              
swayed his head.                                                            
                                                     {BK15|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  "What were you saying?" he asked the general, who continuing his          
report directed the commander in chief's attention to some standards        
captured from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhensk         
regiment.                                                                   
  "Ah, the standards!" said Kutuzov, evidently detaching himself            
with difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.                     
  He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at           
him from all sides awaiting a word from him.                                
  He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment, sighed deeply,         
and closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers              
carrying the standards to advance and surround the commander in             
chief with them. Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds and then,             
submitting with evident reluctance to the duty imposed by his               
position, raised his head and began to speak. A throng of officers          
surrounded him. He looked attentively around at the circle of               
officers, recognizing several of them.                                      
  "I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers and then again        
the officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words          
were distinctly heard. "I thank you all for your hard and faithful          
service. The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor      
to you forever."                                                            
                                                    {BK15|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  He paused and looked around.                                              
  "Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had                  
accidentally lowered the French eagle he was holding before the             
Preobrazhensk standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he         
added, addressing the men with a rapid movement of his chin.                
  "Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices.                                  
  While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his            
saddle and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and               
apparently ironic gleam.                                                    
  "You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all      
at once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no         
longer the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who          
wanted to tell his comrades something very important.                       
                                                    {BK15|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  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!"                           
                                                    {BK15|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could        
have repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then          
changing into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty               
sincerity of that speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined          
with pity for the foe and consciousness of the justice of our cause,        
exactly expressed by that old man's good-natured expletives, was not        
merely understood but lay in the soul of every soldier and found            
expression in their joyous and long-sustained shouts. Afterwards            
when one of the generals addressed Kutuzov asking whether he wished         
his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in answering unexpectedly gave a        
sob, being evidently greatly moved.                                         
                                                                            
BK15|CH7                                                                    
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  When the troops reached their night's halting place on the eighth of      
November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already               
growing dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional           
lightly falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the      
falling snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost      
grew keener.                                                                
  An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three thousand strong        
but now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that      
night at its halting place- a village on the highroad. The                  
quartermasters who met the regiment announced that all the huts were        
full of sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff.      
There was only one hut available for the regimental commander.              
  The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the         
village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.                     
  Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its      
lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep             
through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village,           
and immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of               
branches, and merry voices could be heard from there. Another               
section amid the regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a      
group was busy getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the        
horses. A third section scattered through the village arranging             
quarters for the staff officers, carrying out the French corpses            
that were in the huts, and dragging away boards, dry wood, and              
thatch from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle fences to serve         
for shelter.                                                                
  Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle      
wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.                 
                                                     {BK15|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  "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."                               
                                                    {BK15|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into           
the village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about        
thirty-five feet long an seven feet high, moved forward along the           
village street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of         
the gasping men.                                                            
  "Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now..."           
  Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.                             
  "What are you up to?" suddenly came the authoritative voice of a          
sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden.         
"There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you         
foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I'll give it to you!" shouted he,          
hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back.      
"Can't you make less noise?"                                                
  The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and        
wiped his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling        
against the wattle.                                                         
                                                    {BK15|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                               
                                                    {BK15|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  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.           
                                                                            
BK15|CH8                                                                    
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched          
conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time- lacking warm          
boots and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the          
snow with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations          
(the commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)- they             
would have presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.                   
  On the contrary, the army had never under the best material               
conditions presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was          
because all who began to grow depressed or who lost strength were           
sifted out of the army day by day. All the physically or morally            
weak had long since been left behind and only the flower of the             
army- physically and mentally- remained.                                    
  More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company          
than anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and          
their campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by             
their wattle they demanded contributions of fuel.                           
  "Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you          
lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a         
red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking             
because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you,           
Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said he to another soldier.               
  This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being      
robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier they         
called "Jackdaw," a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose              
obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into the      
light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier           
carrying a load of wood.                                                    
                                                     {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                                                             
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  "Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of        
his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his         
foot. "It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out           
his feet toward the fire.                                                   
  "They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've            
finished hammering them, we're to receive double kits!"                     
  "And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it           
seems," said one sergeant major.                                            
  "I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other.                 
  "Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..."                                    
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "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."         
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "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."                                 
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  "Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there."       
  "But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with         
a puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in      
his own way. A queer lot!"                                                  
  "But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at        
their whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when            
they began burying the dead- where the battle was you know- well,           
those dead had been lying there for nearly a month, and says the            
peasant, 'they lie as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell          
as a puff of powder smoke.'"                                                
  "Was it from the cold?" asked someone.                                    
  "You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If        
it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,'        
he says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he        
says, 'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as        
we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are           
white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'"             
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 30}
  All were silent.                                                          
  "It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to      
gobble the same food as the gentry."                                        
  No one contradicted him.                                                  
  "That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were        
all called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days      
and still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the               
wolves, he says..."                                                         
  "That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one         
worth remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk."       
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 35}
  "And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them          
and, my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw            
down their muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's      
only one case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he           
didn't know the right charm. He catches him and catches him- no             
good! He turns into a bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no      
way of killing him either."                                                 
  "You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!"         
  "Liar, indeed! It's the real truth."                                      
  "If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the        
ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he's          
ruined!"                                                                    
  "Well, anyhow we're going to end it. He won't come here again,"           
remarked the old soldier, yawning.                                          
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 40}
  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."            
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 45}
  "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.                 
                                                    {BK15|CH8 ^paragraph 50}
  "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.                    
                                                                            
BK15|CH9                                                                    
  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.                                                               
                                                     {BK15|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  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:           
                                                    {BK15|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  "Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh,          
my brave, kind friends," and he leaned his head against the shoulder        
of one of the men like a child.                                             
  Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire,                
surrounded by the soldiers.                                                 
  Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes,         
was wearing a woman's cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round        
his head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a            
French song in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the          
nearest soldier. The soldiers simply held their sides as they               
watched him.                                                                
  "Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I'll soon pick it up. How      
is it?" said the man- a singer and a wag- whom Morel was embracing.         
  "Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!" sang Morel, winking. "Ce        
diable a quatre..."*                                                        
                                                    {BK15|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  *"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.                                                                      
                                                    {BK15|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.                                
  "Well, go on, go on!"                                                     
-                                                                           
      "Qui eut le triple talent,                                            
      De boire, de battre,                                                  
                                                    {BK15|CH9 ^paragraph 25}
      Et d'etre un vert galant."*                                           
-                                                                           
  *Who had a triple talent                                                  
   For drinking, for fighting,                                              
   And for being a gallant old boy...                                       
                                                    {BK15|CH9 ^paragraph 30}
-                                                                           
  "It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!"                             
  "Ke..." Zaletaev, brought out with effort: "ke-e-e-e," he drawled,        
laboriously pursing his lips, "le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e                 
de-tra-va-ga-la " he sang.                                                  
  "Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to        
eat?"                                                                       
  "Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after      
starving."                                                                  
                                                    {BK15|CH9 ^paragraph 35}
  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.                           
                                                                            
BK15|CH10                                                                   
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical         
progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has      
been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and        
not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been        
and still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this is         
only because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities          
their army had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated          
at one moment into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory,        
and on the Russian side merely because in Petersburg- far from the          
seat of war- a plan (again one of Pfuel's) had been devised to catch        
Napoleon in a strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured        
himself that all would happen according to plan, and therefore              
insisted that it was just the crossing of the Berezina that                 
destroyed the French army. In reality the results of the crossing were      
much less disastrous to the French- in guns and men lost- than Krasnoe      
had been, as the figures show.                                              
  The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact      
that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans         
for cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only           
possible line of action- the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the        
army demanded- namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd      
fled at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed      
to reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was              
impossible to block its path. This was shown not so much by the             
arrangements it made for crossing as by what took place at the              
bridges. When the bridges broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from         
Moscow and women with children who were with the French transport,          
all- carried on by vis inertiae- pressed forward into boats and into        
the ice-covered water and did not, surrender.                               
  That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of            
pursuers was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own           
people each might hope for help from his fellows and the definite           
place he held among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining        
in the same pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share      
in the necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed          
of the fact that half the prisoners- with whom the Russians did not         
know what to do- perished of cold and hunger despite their captors'         
desire to save them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The          
most compassionate Russian commanders, those favorable to the               
French- and even the Frenchmen in the Russian service- could do             
nothing for the prisoners. The French perished from the conditions          
to which the Russian army was itself exposed. It was impossible to          
take bread and clothes from our hungry and indispensable soldiers to        
give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or guilty,            
were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that, but they were         
exceptions.                                                                 
  Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was          
hope. Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in           
collective flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was         
concentrated.                                                               
  The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the          
remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of         
the Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians,         
and the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, blamed one      
another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of           
the Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led to          
dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly             
expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a          
respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was to      
blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or         
asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable        
formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at      
every turn.                                                                 
                                                    {BK15|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  Because they could not understand him all these people assumed            
that it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never             
grasp the profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his          
phrases (which they thought were mere phrases) about a "golden              
bridge," about the impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd      
of tatterdemalions, and so forth. They had heard all that before.           
And all he said- that it was necessary to await provisions, or that         
the men had no boots- was so simple, while what they proposed was so        
complicated and clever, that it was evident that he was old and stupid      
and that they, though not in power, were commanders of genius.              
  After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and             
Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff         
reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged      
his shoulders. Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get      
angry and write to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the                
Emperor) the following letter:                                              
  "On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency            
please be so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of this, and          
there await further commands and appointments from His Imperial             
Majesty."                                                                   
  But after Bennigsen's departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich                 
Constantine Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the             
beginning of the campaign but had subsequently been removed from the        
army by Kutuzov. Now having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of        
the Emperor's displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the         
slowness of their advance. The Emperor intended to join the army            
personally in a few days' time.                                             
  The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs-         
this same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief          
against the sovereign's wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke           
and heir- apparent from the army- who on his own authority and              
contrary to the Emperor's will had decided on the abandonment of            
Moscow, now realized at once that his day was over, that his part           
was played, and that the power he was supposed to hold was no longer        
his. And he understood this not merely from the attitude of the court.      
He saw on the one hand that the military business in which he had           
played his part was ended and felt that his mission was                     
accomplished; and at the same time he began to be conscious of the          
physical weariness of his aged body and of the necessity of physical        
rest.                                                                       
                                                   {BK15|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilna- his "dear          
Vilna" as he called it. Twice during his career Kutuzov had been            
governor of Vilna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured,        
he found old friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of      
which he had so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the         
cares of army and state and, as far as the passions that seethed            
around him allowed, immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had      
formerly been accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that      
had still to be done in the realm of history did not concern him at         
all.                                                                        
  Chichagov, one of the most zealous "cutters-off" and                      
"breakers-up," who had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece         
and then in Warsaw but never wished to go where he was sent:                
Chichagov, noted for the boldness with which he spoke to the                
Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to be under an obligation to him        
because when he was sent to make peace with Turkey in 1811                  
independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had already been             
concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of securing            
that peace was really Kutuzov's; this Chichagov was the first to            
meet Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress         
naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he           
handed Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The              
contemptuously respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man        
in his dotage was expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of        
Chichagov, who knew of the accusations that were being directed             
against Kutuzov.                                                            
  When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally mentioned that           
the vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at           
Borisov had been recovered and would be restored to him.                    
  "You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the           
contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give         
dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word          
he spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov          
to be animated by the same desire.                                          
  Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle                 
penetrating smile: "I meant merely to say what I said."                     
                                                   {BK15|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part          
of the army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became                   
extraordinarily slack and physically feeble during his stay in that         
town. He attended to army affairs reluctantly, left everything to           
his generals, and while awaiting the Emperor's arrival led a                
dissipated life.                                                            
  Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite-         
Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others- the Emperor         
reached Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove            
straight to the castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred           
generals and staff officers in full parade uniform stood in front of        
the castle, as well as a guard of honor of the Semenov regiment.            
  A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with         
three foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed         
into the vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall           
porter's little lodge.                                                      
  A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress             
uniform, his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his          
stomach, waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its             
peaks to the sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking          
with an effort sideways down the steps to the level of the street,          
took in his hand the report he had prepared for the Emperor.                
  There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka               
furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh        
in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be          
descried.                                                                   
                                                   {BK15|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating         
effect on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all        
over, readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up      
and, at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the          
sleigh, lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began             
speaking in his smooth, ingratiating voice.                                 
  The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot,        
frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to        
the old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too,      
owing to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings,      
had its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob.                          
  The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard, and again         
pressing the old man's hand went with him into the castle.                  
  When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his               
dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes          
made at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions        
for a future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The      
same submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the      
Emperor's commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before            
settled on his face now.                                                    
  When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered head was              
crossing the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by      
someone's voice saying:                                                     
                                                   {BK15|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  "Your Serene Highness!"                                                   
  Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of      
Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which        
lay a small object. Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected      
of him.                                                                     
  Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed      
across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the          
object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the        
First Class.                                                                
                                                                            
BK15|CH11                                                                   
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the               
Emperor honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received the Order of St.      
George of the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest            
honors, but everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him.         
The proprieties were observed and the Emperor was the first to set          
that example, but everybody understood that the old man was                 
blameworthy and good-for-nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming to a custom      
of Catherine's day, ordered the standards that had been captured to be      
lowered at the Emperor's feet on his entering the ballroom, the             
Emperor made a wry face and muttered something in which some people         
caught the words, "the old comedian."                                       
  The Emperor's displeasure with Kutuzov was specially increased at         
Vilna by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could not or would not             
understand the importance of the coming campaign.                           
  When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers            
assembled about him: "You have not only saved Russia, you have saved        
Europe!" they all understood that the war was not ended.                    
  Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion         
that no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of         
Russia, but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that           
Russia had gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the                     
impossibility of levying fresh troops, spoke of the hardships               
already endured by the people, of the possibility of failure and so         
forth.                                                                      
  This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally             
regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.           
                                                    {BK15|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural              
method was to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with         
Barclay at the beginning of the Russian campaign- to transfer the           
authority to the Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under        
the commander in chief's feet without upsetting the old man by              
informing him of the change.                                                
  With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its            
real strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll,                 
Konovnitsyn, and Ermolov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke        
loudly of the field marshal's great weakness and failing health.            
  His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to      
another. And in fact his health was poor.                                   
  So naturally, simply, and gradually- just as he had come from Turkey      
to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to           
the army when he was needed there- now when his part was played out,        
Kutuzov's place was taken by a new and necessary performer.                 
  The war 1812, besides its national significance dear to every             
Russian heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance.         
                                                   {BK15|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a        
movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war               
another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing          
from Kutuzov's and animated by different motives.                           
  Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from         
east to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutuzov had      
been for the salvation and glory of Russia.                                 
  Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or          
Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative          
of the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia        
had been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was         
nothing left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the                   
representative of the national war but to die, and Kutuzov died.            
                                                                            
BK15|CH12                                                                   
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the         
physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until             
after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the      
third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was          
laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious           
fever." But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him,        
and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.                              
  Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that             
happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He            
remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy,              
internal physical distress, and pains in his feet and side. He              
remembered a general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of        
people and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and                
generals who questioned him, he also remembered his difficulty in           
procuring a conveyance and horses, and above all he remembered his          
incapacity to think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue        
he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned          
that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino for more         
than a month had recently died in the Rostovs' house at Yaroslavl, and      
Denisov who told him this news also mentioned Helene's death,               
supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at the          
time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its        
significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly          
as possible from places where people were killing one another, to some      
peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over        
all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he           
immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw      
in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had        
come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had          
been living on his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and            
illness had come to look after him.                                         
  It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost           
the impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months      
and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere        
tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he        
would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long            
time in his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of                
captivity. In the same way little by little he came to understand           
the news he had been told after his rescue, about the death of              
Prince Andrew, the death of his wife, and the destruction of the            
French.                                                                     
  A joyous feeling of freedom- that complete inalienable freedom            
natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt             
outside Moscow- filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He           
was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent        
of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of         
external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without                   
acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere.        
He had all he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a              
continual torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more.        
  "Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid      
table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down         
for the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the           
French had gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how           
splendid!"                                                                  
                                                    {BK15|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what           
then? What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the           
answer: "Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"                             
  The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he           
had continually sought to find- the aim of life- no longer existed for      
him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared         
temporarily- he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not        
present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the          
complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at        
this time.                                                                  
  He could not see an aim, for he now had faith- not faith in any kind      
of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living,                   
ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set                
himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God,           
and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning      
but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God        
is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in             
Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the        
Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a      
man who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds         
what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the        
heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in           
front of him without straining his eyes.                                    
  In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable         
infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere           
and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had         
only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had            
equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space,      
where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed          
to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen.           
And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and          
philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as        
he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances           
and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and                  
senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal,      
and infinite in everything, and therefore- to see it and enjoy its          
contemplation- he naturally threw away the telescope through which          
he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the             
ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around      
him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became.        
That dreadful question, "What for?" which had formerly destroyed all        
his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question,           
"What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because      
there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from         
a man's head."                                                              
                                                                            
BK15|CH13                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance          
he was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and          
seemed occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something        
special of his own. The difference between his former and present self      
was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was          
said to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly            
seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still         
forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before           
his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and                 
seemingly ironic smile at what was before him and listened to what was      
said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different.        
Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so        
people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of            
life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others, shone in        
his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as                 
contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.               
  Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he               
talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in              
conversation and knew how to listen so that people readily told him         
their most intimate secrets.                                                
  The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly        
hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him          
after the old count's death, now after staying a short time in Orel-        
where she had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his            
ingratitude she considered it her duty to nurse him- felt to her            
surprise and vexation that she had become fond of him. Pierre did           
not in any way seek her approval, he merely studied her with interest.      
Formerly she had felt that he regarded her with indifference and            
irony, and so had shrunk into herself as she did with others and had        
shown him only the combative side of her nature; but now he seemed          
to be trying to understand the most intimate places of her heart, and,      
mistrustfully at first but afterwards gratefully, she let him see           
the hidden, kindly sides of her character.                                  
  The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more        
successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and           
showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre's cunning consisted simply in        
finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,      
hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.                                  
  "Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence      
of bad people but of people such as myself," thought she.                   
                                                    {BK15|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  His servants too- Terenty and Vaska- in their own way noticed the         
change that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had          
become much "simpler." Terenty, when he had helped him undress and          
wished him good night, often lingered with his master's boots in his        
hands and clothes over his arm, to see whether he would not start a         
talk. And Pierre, noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally            
kept him there.                                                             
  "Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?" he would ask.               
  And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of      
the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and      
talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and then would go      
out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master         
and affection for him.                                                      
  The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though          
he considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every          
moment was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with         
Pierre telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on           
the characters of his patients in general, and especially of the            
ladies.                                                                     
  "It's a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our           
provincials," he would say.                                                 
                                                   {BK15|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the        
doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.                 
  This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make         
fun of the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.                        
  The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk      
with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love, and      
pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially           
against Napoleon.                                                           
  "If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight      
such a nation," he said to Pierre. "You, who have suffered so from the      
French, do not even feel animosity toward them."                            
  Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely          
by evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so          
doing.                                                                      
                                                   {BK15|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  During the last days of Pierre's stay in Orel his old Masonic             
acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in        
1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress           
who had a large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary        
post in the commissariat department in that town.                           
  Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though they had             
never been intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship         
and intimacy that people who meet in a desert generally express for         
one another. Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man      
of his own circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.                
  But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged         
much behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself,         
into apathy and egotism.                                                    
  "You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow," he said.                   
  But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had            
been formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To          
Pierre as he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to      
think that he had been like that himself but a short time before.           
                                                   {BK15|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family           
affairs, his wife's affairs, and his official duties. He regarded           
all these occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that            
they were all contemptible because their aim was the welfare of             
himself and his family. Military, administrative, political, and            
Masonic interests continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre,           
without trying to change the other's views and without condemning him,      
but with the quiet, joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him,           
was interested in this strange though very familiar phenomenon.             
  There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with        
the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met,          
which gained for him the general good will. This was his                    
acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by      
words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking,         
feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This            
legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and          
irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and         
the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes        
complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and         
between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused        
and gentle smile.                                                           
  In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a            
center of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary          
questions, especially requests for money to which, as an extremely          
wealthy man, he was very exposed, produced in him a state of                
hopeless agitation and perplexity. "To give or not to give?" he had         
asked himself. "I have it and he needs it. But someone else needs it        
still more. Who needs it most? And perhaps they are both impostors?"        
In the old days he had been unable to find a way out of all these           
surmises and had given to all who asked as long as he had anything          
to give. Formerly he had been in a similar state of perplexity with         
regard to every question concerning his property, when one person           
advised one thing and another something else.                               
  Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt          
or perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a             
judge who by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should         
not be done.                                                                
  He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he          
felt certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first         
time he had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a         
colonel, came to him and, after talking a great deal about his              
exploits, concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre         
should give him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children.      
Pierre refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was              
afterwards surprised how simple and easy had been what used to              
appear so insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused        
the colonel's demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to      
artifice when leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept         
some money of which he was evidently in need. A further proof to            
Pierre of his own more settled outlook on practical matters was             
furnished by his decision with regard to his wife's debts and to the        
rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow.                                
                                                   {BK15|CH13 ^paragraph 25}
  His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him      
his diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according        
to the head steward's calculation, about two million rubles.                
  To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an           
estimate showing that despite these losses his income would not be          
diminished but would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife's      
debts which he was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild         
his Moscow house and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had      
cost him eighty thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.              
  "Yes, of course that's true," said Pierre with a cheerful smile.          
"I don't need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much           
richer."                                                                    
  But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave him an account          
of the state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect        
had made of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses,             
speaking of this as of a settled matter. About the same time he             
received letters from Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances      
speaking of his wife's debts. And Pierre decided that the steward's         
proposals which had so pleased him were wrong and that he must go to        
Petersburg and settle his wife's affairs and must rebuild in Moscow.        
Why this was necessary he did not know, but he knew for certain that        
it was necessary. His income would be reduced by three fourths, but he      
felt it must be done.                                                       
  Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together.         
                                                   {BK15|CH13 ^paragraph 30}
  During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel Pierre had             
experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his        
journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new          
faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt         
like a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone- the stagecoach driver, the           
post-house overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villages-        
had a new significance for him. The presence and remarks of                 
Willarski who continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia      
and its backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's          
pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary          
strength and vitality- the strength which in that vast space amid           
the snows maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique        
people. He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree            
with him- an apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid             
discussions that could lead to nothing- and he smiled joyfully as he        
listened to him.                                                            
                                                                            
BK15|CH14                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has      
been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of            
rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they          
jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally            
difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of        
the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But        
when we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity,               
energy, and immense number of the delving insects prove that despite        
the destruction of the heap, something indestructible, which though         
intangible is the real strength of the colony, still exists; and            
similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October there was no            
government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses- it was still the        
Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something           
intangible yet powerful and indestructible.                                 
  The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after          
it had been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and        
at first for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all      
had in common: a desire to get to the place that had been called            
Moscow, to apply their activities there.                                    
  Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in         
a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the      
number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in        
1812.                                                                       
  The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of                   
Wintzingerode's detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and        
residents who had fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its               
vicinity. The Russians who entered Moscow, finding it plundered,            
plundered it in their turn. They continued what the French had              
begun. Trains of peasant carts came to Moscow to carry off to the           
villages what had been abandoned in the ruined houses and the streets.      
The Cossacks carried off what they could to their camps, and the            
householders seized all they could find in other houses and moved it        
to their own, pretending that it was their property.                        
  But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third            
contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and          
more difficult and assumed more definite forms.                             
                                                    {BK15|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations          
of regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and                      
craftsmanship, with luxury, and governmental and religious                  
institutions. These forms were lifeless but still existed. There            
were bazaars, shops, warehouses, market stalls, granaries- for the          
most part still stocked with goods- and there were factories and            
workshops, palaces and wealthy houses filled with luxuries, hospitals,      
prisons, government offices, churches, and cathedrals. The longer           
the French remained the more these forms of town life perished,             
until finally all was merged into one confused, lifeless scene of           
plunder.                                                                    
  The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the        
wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But      
plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city         
began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater      
the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth      
of the city and its regular life restored.                                  
  Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by                
curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest- house            
owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and            
peasants- streamed into Moscow as blood flows to the heart.                 
  Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off         
plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses        
out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades'            
discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat            
down one another's prices to below what they had been in former             
days. Gangs of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow             
every day, and on all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built,         
and old, charred ones repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths.          
Cookshops and taverns were opened in partially burned houses. The           
clergy resumed the services in many churches that had not been burned.      
Donors contributed Church property that had been stolen. Government         
clerks set up their baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of           
documents in small rooms. The higher authorities and the police             
organized the distribution of goods left behind by the French. The          
owners of houses in which much property had been left, brought there        
from other houses, complained of the injustice of taking everything to      
the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin; others insisted that as the              
French had gathered things from different houses into this or that          
house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to keep all that was           
found there. They abused the police and bribed them, made out               
estimates at ten times their value for government stores that had           
perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin             
wrote proclamations.                                                        
                                                                            
BK15|CH15                                                                   
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex        
of his house which had not been burned. He called on Count                  
Rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he        
intended to leave for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was              
celebrating the victory, everything was bubbling with life in the           
ruined but reviving city. Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone      
wished to meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he had           
seen. Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all, but           
was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in           
any way. To all questions put to him- whether important or quite            
trifling- such as: Where would he live? Was he going to rebuild?            
When was he going to Petersburg and would he mind taking a parcel           
for someone?- he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I think so," and so on.      
  He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but the thought of         
Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant         
memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from              
social obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him,      
he had aroused in himself.                                                  
  On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskoys          
that Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days      
of Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre's thoughts and now recurred      
to him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary      
was in Moscow and living in her house- which had not been burned- in        
Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her.                 
  On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of         
their friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially          
of the last one at Borodino.                                                
  "Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then      
in? Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him        
before he died?" thought Pierre. He recalled Karataev and his death         
and involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and         
yet so similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the         
love he felt for both of them.                                              
                                                    {BK15|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  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.           
                                                   {BK15|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
  The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand.              
  "Yes," she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her      
hand, "so this is how we meet again. He of spoke of you even at the         
very last," she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion      
with a shyness that surprised him for an instant.                           
  "I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of          
good news we had received for a long time."                                 
  Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more          
uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre         
interrupted her.                                                            
  "Just imagine- I knew nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had      
been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only          
know that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!"      
                                                   {BK15|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
  Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the           
companion's face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and,      
as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion      
in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would           
not hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.                        
  But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary's face expressed         
still greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre's        
face to that of the lady in the black dress and said:                       
  "Do you really not recognize her?"                                        
  Pierre looked again at the companion's pale, delicate face with           
its black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long          
forgotten and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive           
eyes.                                                                       
  "But no, it can't be!" he thought. "This stern, thin, pale face that      
looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her."        
But at that moment Princess Mary said, "Natasha!" And with difficulty,      
effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its           
hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from      
that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre          
with a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even         
been thinking- especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him,      
and enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer           
possible, it was Natasha and he loved her.                                  
                                                   {BK15|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess          
Mary, and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had            
been unaware. He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He             
tried to hide his agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more      
clearly- clearer than any words could have done- did he betray to           
himself, to her, and to Princess Mary that he loved her.                    
  "No, it's only the unexpectedness of it," thought Pierre. But as          
soon as he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with             
Princess Mary he again glanced at Natasha, and a still-deeper flush         
suffused his face and a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and         
fear seized his soul. He became confused in his speech and stopped          
in the middle of what he was saying.                                        
  Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect      
to see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the            
change in her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin         
and pale, but that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was            
unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that face whose          
eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life,           
now when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least        
shadow of a smile: only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly            
interrogative.                                                              
  Pierre's confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natasha's        
part, but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her             
whole face.                                                                 
                                                                            
BK15|CH16                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  "She has come to stay with me," said Princess Mary. "The count and        
countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful          
state; but it was necessary for Natasha herself to see a doctor.            
They insisted on her coming with me."                                       
  "Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?" said Pierre,               
addressing Natasha. "You know it happened the very day we were              
rescued. I saw him. What a delightful boy he was!"                          
  Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes         
widened and lit up.                                                         
  "What can one say or think of as a consolation?" said Pierre.             
"Nothing! Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?"            
  "Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith..."            
remarked Princess Mary.                                                     
                                                    {BK15|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "Yes, yes, that is really true," Pierre hastily interrupted her.          
  "Why is it true?" Natasha asked, looking attentively into Pierre's        
eyes.                                                                       
  "How can you ask why?" said Princess Mary. "The thought alone of          
what awaits..."                                                             
  Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked          
inquiringly at Pierre.                                                      
  "And because," Pierre continued, "only one who believes that there        
is a God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours."              
                                                   {BK15|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly                
stopped. Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed          
Princess Mary, asking about his friend's last days.                         
  Pierre's confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time          
he felt that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that             
there was now a judge of his every word and action whose judgment           
mattered more to him than that of all the rest of the world. As he          
spoke now he was considering what impression his words would make on        
Natasha. He did not purposely say things to please her, but whatever        
he was saying he regarded from her standpoint.                              
  Princess Mary- reluctantly as is usual in such cases- began               
telling of the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But          
Pierre's face quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager           
restless expression, gradually compelled her to go into details             
which she feared to recall for her own sake.                                
  "Yes, yes, and so...? " Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her        
with his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. "Yes, yes... so      
he grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always              
sought one thing- to be perfectly good- so he could not be afraid of        
death. The faults he had- if he had any- were not of his making. So he      
did soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again," he added,         
suddenly turning to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of            
tears.                                                                      
  Natasha's face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a           
moment. She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not.               
                                                   {BK15|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes, that was happiness," she then said in her quiet voice with its      
deep chest notes. "For me it certainly was happiness." She paused.          
"And he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I         
entered the room...."                                                       
  Natasha's voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her      
knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted           
her head and began to speak rapidly.                                        
  "We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare        
to ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me he was traveling with         
us. I had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I         
wanted was to see him and be with him," she said, trembling, and            
breathing quickly.                                                          
  And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she           
had never yet mentioned to anyone- all she had lived through during         
those three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslavl.                   
  Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full      
of tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of          
death, nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only        
pity for her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking.        
                                                   {BK15|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat         
beside Natasha, and heard for the first time the story of those last        
days of her brother's and Natasha's love.                                   
  Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale.            
  She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate               
secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish.            
Several times she repeated the same thing twice.                            
  Dessalles' voice was heard outside the door asking whether little         
Nicholas might come in to say good night.                                   
  "Well, that's all- everything," said Natasha.                             
                                                   {BK15|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the            
door which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and          
rushed from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow.                  
  Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did        
not understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world.                 
  Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his              
attention to her nephew who had entered the room.                           
  At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas' face, which        
resembled his father's, affected Pierre so much that when he had            
kissed the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and            
went to the window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but           
she would not let him go.                                                   
  "No, Natasha and I sometimes don't go to sleep till after two, so         
please don't go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come           
immediately."                                                               
                                                   {BK15|CH16 ^paragraph 30}
  Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: "This is the          
first time she has talked of him like that."                                
                                                                            
BK15|CH17                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVII                                                              
-                                                                           
  Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few          
minutes later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with             
Natasha. Natasha was calm, though a severe and grave expression had         
again settled on her face. They all three of them now experienced that      
feeling of awkwardness which usually follows after a serious and            
heartfelt talk. It is impossible to go back to the same                     
conversation, to talk of trifles is awkward, and yet the desire to          
speak is there and silence seems like affectation. They went                
silently to table. The footmen drew back the chairs and pushed them up      
again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin and, resolving to break        
the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess Mary. They had               
evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of both shone with      
satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life also has joy.        
  "Do you take vodka, Count?" asked Princess Mary, and those words          
suddenly banished the shadows of the past. "Now tell us about               
yourself," said she. "One hears such improbable wonders about you."         
  "Yes," replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to        
him. "They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary             
Abramovna invited me to her house and kept telling me what had              
happened, or ought to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also           
instructed me how I ought to tell of my experiences. In general I have      
noticed that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I am an              
interesting man now); people invite me out and tell me all about            
myself."                                                                    
  Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.                          
  "We have been told," Princess Mary interrupted her, "that you lost        
two millions in Moscow. Is that true?"                                      
                                                    {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 5}
  "But I am three times as rich as before," returned Pierre.                
  Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his            
wife's debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that        
he had become three times as rich as before.                                
  "What I have certainly gained is freedom," he began seriously, but        
did not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic.               
  "And are you building?"                                                   
  "Yes. Savelich says I must!"                                              
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 10}
  "Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided        
to remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed,          
noticing that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed      
to his words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.                         
  "No," answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning      
Princess Mary had given to his words. "I heard of it in Orel and you        
cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple," he      
added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face                 
curiosity as to how he would speak of his wife, "but her death shocked      
me terribly. When two people quarrel they are always both in fault,         
and one's own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other        
is no longer alive. And then such a death... without friends and            
without consolation! I am very, very sorry for her," he concluded, and      
was pleased to notice a look of glad approval on Natasha's face.            
  "Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor," said                
Princess Mary.                                                              
  Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to          
look at Natasha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was      
cold, stern, and he fancied even contemptuous.                              
  "And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been            
told?" said Princess Mary.                                                  
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 15}
  Pierre laughed.                                                           
  "No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken                
prisoner means being Napoleon's guest. Not only did I never see him         
but I heard nothing about him- I was in much lower company!"                
  Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his      
captivity was gradually led on to do so.                                    
  "But it's true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?"             
Natasha asked with a slight smile. "I guessed it then when we met at        
the Sukharev tower, do you remember?"                                       
  Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by      
Princess Mary's questions and especially by Natasha's into giving a         
detailed account of his adventures.                                         
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 20}
  At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary            
with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he        
came to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was         
unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed           
emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he      
has lived through.                                                          
  Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at         
Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his                 
goodness. Natasha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face         
constantly changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an              
attention that never wandered- evidently herself experiencing all that      
he described. Not only her look, but her exclamations and the brief         
questions she put, showed Pierre that she understood just what he           
wished to convey. It was clear that she understood not only what he         
said but also what he wished to, but could not, express in words.           
The account Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman        
for protecting whom he was arrested was this: "It was an awful              
sight- children abandoned, some in the flames... One was snatched           
out before my eyes... and there were women who had their things             
snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed and grew            
confused. "Then a patrol arrived and all the men- all those who were        
not looting, that is- were arrested, and I among them."                     
  "I am sure you're not telling us everything; I am sure you did            
something..." said Natasha and pausing added, "something fine?"             
  Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass        
over the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not          
omit anything.                                                              
  Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this time he had      
risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natasha following him         
with her eyes. Then he added:                                               
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 25}
  "No, you can't understand what I learned from that illiterate man-        
that simple fellow."                                                        
  "Yes, yes, go on!" said Natasha. "Where is he?"                           
  "They killed him almost before my eyes."                                  
  And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of           
the last days of their retreat, of Karataev's illness and his death.        
  He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now,      
as it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that          
he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which         
a man has when women listen to him- not clever women who when               
listening either try to remember what they hear to enrich their             
minds and when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt        
it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute their own           
clever comments prepared in their little mental workshop- but the           
pleasure given by real women gifted with a capacity to select and           
absorb the very best a man shows of himself. Natasha without knowing        
it was all attention: she did not lose a word, no single quiver in          
Pierre's voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in his face, nor a           
single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its flight and            
took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret meaning of        
all Pierre's mental travail.                                                
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 30}
  Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she      
now saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the         
possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and           
the first thought of this filled her heart with gladness.                   
  It was three o'clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad         
and stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.             
  Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at him intently      
with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to                  
understand something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre          
in shamefaced and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and          
tried to think what to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess      
Mary was silent. It occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock      
and time to go to bed.                                                      
  "People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre,            
"but if at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you          
were before you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?'         
then for heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh!          
We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is             
lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While           
there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. I say      
this to you," he added, turning to Natasha.                                 
  "Yes, yes," she said, answering something quite different. "I too         
should wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning."               
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 35}
  Pierre looked intently at her.                                            
  "Yes, and nothing more." said Natasha.                                    
  "It's not true, not true!" cried Pierre. "I am not to blame for           
being alive and wishing to live- nor you either."                           
  Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and      
began to cry.                                                               
  "What is it, Natasha?" said Princess Mary.                                
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 40}
  "Nothing, nothing." She smiled at Pierre through her tears. "Good         
night! It is time for bed."                                                 
  Pierre rose and took his leave.                                           
-                                                                           
  Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked        
of what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her             
opinion of Pierre nor did Natasha speak of him.                             
  "Well, good night, Mary!" said Natasha. "Do you know, I am often          
afraid that by not speaking of him" (she meant Prince Andrew) "for          
fear of not doing justice to our feelings, we forget him."                  
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 45}
  Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice          
of Natasha's remark, but she did not express agreement in words.            
  "Is it possible to forget?" said she.                                     
  "It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard           
and painful, but good, very good!" said Natasha. "I am sure he              
really loved him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?" she          
added, suddenly blushing.                                                   
  "To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!" said                
Princess Mary.                                                              
  "Do you know, Mary..." Natasha suddenly said with a mischievous           
smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long             
time, "he has somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh- as if he           
had just come out of a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral      
bath. Isn't it true?"                                                       
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 50}
  "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."                                                
                                                   {BK15|CH17 ^paragraph 55}
  "Well, good night," said Natasha.                                         
  And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her            
face as if it had been forgotten there.                                     
                                                                            
BK15|CH18                                                                   
  CHAPTER XVIII                                                             
-                                                                           
  It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He         
paced up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult         
problem and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and              
wincing, and now smiling happily.                                           
  He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of their love,          
at one moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that        
feeling. It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and        
down the room.                                                              
  "Well, what's to be done if it cannot be avoided? What's to be done?      
Evidently it has to be so," said he to himself, and hastily undressing      
he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or             
indecision.                                                                 
  "Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do                
everything that she and I may be man and wife," he told himself.            
  A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on           
the Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savelich came to ask him         
about packing for the journey.                                              
                                                    {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 5}
  "What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in                 
Petersburg?" he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. "Oh, yes,      
long ago before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to           
Petersburg," he reflected. "Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good        
fellow he is and how attentive, and how he remembers everything," he        
thought, looking at Savelich's old face, "and what a pleasant smile he      
has!"                                                                       
  "Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?"           
Pierre asked him.                                                           
  "What's the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under        
the late count- the kingdom of heaven be his!- and we have lived under      
you too, without ever being wronged."                                       
  "And your children?"                                                      
  "The children will live just the same. With such masters one can          
live."                                                                      
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 10}
  "But what about my heirs?" said Pierre. "Supposing I suddenly             
marry... it might happen," he added with an involuntary smile.              
  "If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good           
thing."                                                                     
  "How easy he thinks it," thought Pierre. "He doesn't know how             
terrible it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is             
terrible!"                                                                  
  "So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?" asked               
Savelich.                                                                   
  "No, I'll put it off for a bit. I'll tell you later. You must             
forgive the trouble I have put you to," said Pierre, and seeing             
Savelich smile, he thought: "But how strange it is that he should           
not know that now there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be      
settled first of all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only      
pretending. Shall I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?"           
Pierre reflected. "No, another time."                                       
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 15}
  At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had            
been to see Princess Mary the day before and had there met- "Whom do        
you think? Natasha Rostova!"                                                
  The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than        
if he had seen Anna Semenovna.                                              
  "Do you know her?" asked Pierre.                                          
  "I have seen the princess," she replied. "I heard that they were          
arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would be a very good        
thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined."                 
  "No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?"                                 
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 20}
  "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.                          
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 25}
  "And this man too," thought Pierre, looking into the face of the          
Chief of Police. "What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind.           
Fancy bothering about such trifies now! And they actually say he is         
not honest and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn't          
he take bribes? That's the way he was brought up, and everybody does        
it. But what a kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at         
me."                                                                        
  Pierre went to Princess Mary's to dinner.                                 
  As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned      
down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The                    
picturesqueness of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the          
burned-out quarters of the town, stretching out and concealing one          
another, reminded him of the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he         
met and their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for new         
houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked        
at him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: "Ah, there he         
is! Let's see what will come of it!"                                        
  At the entrance to Princess Mary's house Pierre felt doubtful             
whether he had really been there the night before and really seen           
Natasha and talked to her. "Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall          
go in and find no one there." But he had hardly entered the room            
before he felt her presence with his whole being by the loss of his         
sense of freedom. She was in the same black dress with soft folds           
and her hair was done the same way as the day before, yet she was           
quite different. Had she been like this when he entered the day before      
he could not for a moment have failed to recognize her.                     
  She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince      
Andrew's fiancee. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on      
her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.                   
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 30}
  Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there,      
but Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house            
with her.                                                                   
  Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening.              
Though Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently glad to see their           
visitor and though all Pierre's interest was now centered in that           
house, by the evening they had talked over everything and the               
conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and repeatedly        
broke off. He stayed so long that Princess Mary and Natasha                 
exchanged glances, evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre             
noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat      
on because he simply could not get up and take his leave.                   
  Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and                 
complaining of a headache began to say good night.                          
  "So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?" she asked.                     
  "No, I am not going," Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone         
and as though offended. "Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow- but I        
won't say good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any               
commissions for me," said he, standing before Princess Mary and             
turning red, but not taking his departure.                                  
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 35}
  Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other        
hand instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly        
and intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had      
plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and              
long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.               
  When Natasha left the room Pierre's confusion and awkwardness             
immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly      
moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.                                     
  "Yes, I wanted to tell you," said he, answering her look as if she        
had spoken. "Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess,      
my dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of            
her, I know it's impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a          
brother to her. No, not that, I don't, I can't..."                          
  He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.                    
  "Well," he went on with an evident effort at self-control and             
coherence. "I don't know when I began to love her, but I have loved         
her and her alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine      
life without her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the               
thought that perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be         
missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell           
me, can I hope? Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!" he added           
after a pause, and touched her hand as she did not reply.                   
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 40}
  "I am thinking of what you have told me," answered Princess Mary.         
"This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love        
at present..."                                                              
  Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love         
was impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden          
change in Natasha two days before that she would not only not be            
hurt if Pierre spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she        
wished for.                                                                 
  "To speak to her now wouldn't do," said the princess all the same.        
  "But what am I to do?                                                     
  "Leave it to me," said Princess Mary. "I know..."                         
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 45}
  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...?"            
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 50}
  "Yes, I think so," said Princess Mary with a smile. "Write to her         
parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it          
to happen and my heart tells me it will."                                   
  "No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can't be.... How happy I        
am! No, it can't be!" Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess              
Mary's hands.                                                               
  "Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you,"           
she said.                                                                   
  "To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I'll go. But I may come again        
tomorrow?"                                                                  
  Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less animated            
than she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her          
Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor        
she existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. "Is it          
possible? No, it can't be," he told himself at every look, gesture,         
and word that filled his soul with joy.                                     
                                                   {BK15|CH18 ^paragraph 55}
  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.                                                     
                                                                            
BK15|CH19                                                                   
  CHAPTER XIX                                                               
-                                                                           
  There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled      
it during his courtship of Helene.                                          
  He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the        
words he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and,             
"Whatever made me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now              
repeated in imagination every word that he or Natasha had spoken and        
pictured every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to            
diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and again. There      
was now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what he had         
undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible doubt sometimes            
crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all a dream? Isn't Princess Mary               
mistaken? Am I not too conceited and self-confident? I believe all          
this- and suddenly Princess Mary will tell her, and she will be sure        
to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be deluding himself. Doesn't        
he know that he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am something            
altogether different and higher.'"                                          
  That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now            
make any plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable          
that if only he could attain it, it would be the end of all things.         
Everything ended with that.                                                 
  A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself              
incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of life- not for him alone      
but for the whole world- seemed to him centered in his love and the         
possibility of being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to      
be occupied with one thing only- his future happiness. Sometimes it         
seemed to him that other people were all as pleased as he was               
himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be          
busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw                 
allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met by his          
significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to express a              
secret understanding between him and them. And when he realized that        
people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his         
whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them that all that      
occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.            
  When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service,      
or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the      
assumption that everybody's welfare depended on this or that issue          
of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and                
surprise people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw            
everybody- both those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning      
of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who           
evidently did not understand it- in the bright light of the emotion         
that shone within himself, and at once without any effort saw in            
everyone he met everything that was good and worthy of being loved.         
                                                    {BK15|CH19 ^paragraph 5}
  When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her            
memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the        
bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili, who having obtained a new post and        
some fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed          
to him a pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.                        
  Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity.      
All the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained      
true for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently,        
but when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the        
views he had held at this time of his madness and they always proved        
correct.                                                                    
  "I may have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was      
not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had            
more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is             
worth understanding in life, because... because I was happy."               
  Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to          
discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in            
people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love,         
and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes         
for loving them.                                                            
                                                                            
BK15|CH20                                                                   
  CHAPTER XX                                                                
-                                                                           
  After Pierre's departure that first evening, when Natasha had said        
to Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: "He looks just, yes, just      
as if he had come out of a Russian bath- in a short coat and with           
his hair cropped," something hidden and unknown to herself, but             
irrepressible, awoke in Natasha's soul.                                     
  Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered.        
To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to           
the surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to      
have forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer                  
complained of her position, did not say a word about the past, and          
no longer feared to make happy plans for the future. She spoke              
little of Pierre, but when Princess Mary mentioned him a                    
long-extinguished light once more kindled in her eyes and her lips          
curved with a strange smile.                                                
  The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised Princess         
Mary; but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. "Can she          
have loved my brother so little as to be able to forget him so              
soon?" she thought when she reflected on the change. But when she           
was with Natasha she was not vexed with her and did not reproach            
her. The reawakened power of life that had seized Natasha was so            
evidently irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her presence          
Princess Mary felt that she had no right to reproach her even in her        
heart.                                                                      
   Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling         
that she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad,           
but bright and cheerful.                                                    
  When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk          
with Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold.                              
                                                    {BK15|CH20 ^paragraph 5}
  "He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?" she repeated.                        
  And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness      
for her joy settled on Natasha's face.                                      
  "I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me."           
  Understandable and touching as the look with which Natasha gazed          
at her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her             
agitation, these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her          
brother and his love.                                                       
  "But what's to be done? She can't help it," thought the princess.         
                                                   {BK15|CH20 ^paragraph 10}
  And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all that            
Pierre had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha         
was astounded.                                                              
  "To Petersburg!" she repeated as if unable to understand.                 
  But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary's face she           
guessed the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.               
  "Mary," said she, "tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being         
bad. Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...."                          
  "You love him?"                                                           
                                                   {BK15|CH20 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes," whispered Natasha.                                                 
  "Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake," said Princess        
Mary, who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha's joy.               
  "It won't be just yet- someday. Think what fun it will be when I          
am his wife and you marry Nicholas!"                                        
  "Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about        
you."                                                                       
  They were silent awhile.                                                  
                                                   {BK15|CH20 ^paragraph 20}
  "But why go to Petersburg?" Natasha suddenly asked, and hastily           
replied to her own question. "But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He          
must...."                                                                   
                                                                            
EP1                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                           FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20                        
                                                                            
EP1|CH1                                                                     
  CHAPTER I                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had      
subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the          
mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of        
their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.                       
  Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the           
movement of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time.            
Various groups of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation         
and dissolution of kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in              
course of preparation.                                                      
  The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to             
shore as previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures        
were not borne by the waves from one shore to another as before.            
They now seemed to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the        
head of armies, who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by        
ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless           
movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.      
  The historians call this activity of the historical figures "the          
reaction."                                                                  
  In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical           
personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the          
reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and      
Napoleon to Madame de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte,                    
Chateaubriand, and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and      
are acquitted or condemned according to whether they conduced to            
progress or to reaction.                                                    
                                                      {EP1|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in         
Russia also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who        
according to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the        
commencement of his reign, being the savior of Russia.                      
  There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist        
to learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander      
for things he did wrong at this period of his reign.                        
  "He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he      
did well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning      
of his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution      
to Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev,        
favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and                
Photius. He also acted badly by concerning himself with the active          
army and disbanding the Semenov regiment."                                  
  It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the           
historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good         
for humanity.                                                               
  What do these reproaches mean?                                            
                                                     {EP1|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                             
                                                     {EP1|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                           
                                                                            
EP1|CH2                                                                     
  CHAPTER II                                                                
-                                                                           
  If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to         
the attainment of certain ends- the greatness of Russia or of               
France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas          
of the Revolution general progress or anything else- then it is             
impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing the          
conceptions of chance and genius.                                           
  If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth        
century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have          
been accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the            
invasion. If the aim wag the aggrandizement of France, that might have      
been attained without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the         
aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have           
accomplished that much better than warfare. If the aim was the              
progress of civilization, it is easy to see that there are other            
ways of diffusing civilization more expedient than by the                   
destruction of wealth and of human lives.                                   
  Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?                      
  Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius             
utilized it," says history.                                                 
  But what is chance? What is genius?                                       
                                                      {EP1|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                          
                                                     {EP1|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                          
                                                                            
EP1|CH3                                                                     
  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.          
                                                      {EP1|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  This ideal of glory and grandeur- which consists not merely in            
considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on           
every crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible                
supernatural significance- that ideal, destined to guide this man           
and his associates, had scope for its development in Africa.                
Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The               
cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His        
childishly rash, uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa,           
leaving his comrades in distress, is set down to his credit, and again      
the enemy's fleet twice lets him slip past. When, intoxicated by the        
crimes he has committed so successfully, he reaches Paris, the              
dissolution of the republican government, which a year earlier might        
have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there      
now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can only serve to           
exalt him- and though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for         
his new role.                                                               
  He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties              
snatched at him and demanded his participation.                             
  He alone- with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy         
and Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and             
frankness in lying- he alone could justify what had to be done.             
  He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from      
his will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his        
mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and      
the conspiracy is crowned with success.                                     
  He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes        
to flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon         
and says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once         
proud and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played        
out, are even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they        
should have said to destroy him and retain their power.                     
                                                     {EP1|CH3 ^paragraph 10}
  Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by         
agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the                
characters of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms         
the character of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government;            
chance contrives a plot against him which not only fails to harm him        
but confirms his power. Chance puts the Duc d'Enghien in his hands and      
unexpectedly causes him to kill him- thereby convincing the mob more        
forcibly than in any other way that he had the right, since he had the      
might. Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to           
prepare an expedition against England (which would inevitably have          
ruined him) he never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly           
falls upon Mack and the Austrians, who surrender without a battle.          
Chance and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance         
all men, not only the French but all Europe- except England which does      
not take part in the events about to happen- despite their former           
horror and detestation of his crimes, now recognize his authority, the      
title he has given himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which      
seems excellent and reasonable to them all.                                 
  As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement,         
the western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806,        
1807, and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of          
people that had formed in France unites into one group with the             
peoples of Central Europe. The strength of the justification of the         
man who stands at the head of the movement grows with the increased         
size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory period this man had      
formed relations with all the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited      
rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate         
Napoleonic ideal of glory and grandeur. One after another they              
hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia      
sends his wife to seek the great man's mercy; the Emperor of Austria        
considers it a favor that this man receives a daughter the Caesars          
into his bed; the Pope, the guardian of all that the nations hold           
sacred, utilizes religion for the aggrandizement of the great man.          
It is not Napoleon who prepares himself for the accomplishment of           
his role, so much as all those round him who prepare him to take on         
himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and has to           
happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he commits, which in      
the mouths of those around him is not at once represented as a great        
deed. The most suitable fete the Germans can devise for him is a            
celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he great, but so are         
his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law.         
Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his reason and          
to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so too           
are the forces.                                                             
  The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal- Moscow.          
That city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the        
opposing armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to           
Wagram. But suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which         
hitherto had so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of          
successes to the predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of               
inverse chances occur- from the cold in his head at Borodino to the         
sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frosts- and instead of             
genius, stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.                 
  The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are         
now not for Napoleon but always against him.                                
  A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a           
remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east.         
Attempted drives from east to west- similar to the contrary                 
movements of 1805, 1807, and 1809- precede the great westward               
movement; there is the same coalescence into a group of enormous            
dimensions; the same adhesion of the people of Central Europe to the        
movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing rapidity      
as the goal is approached.                                                  
                                                     {EP1|CH3 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                                                   
                                                                            
EP1|CH4                                                                     
  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.                                                    
                                                      {EP1|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off      
his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.                       
  And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to             
himself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues      
and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to      
the whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as        
long as an unseen hand directed his actions.                                
  The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the          
actor shows him to us.                                                      
  "See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was         
not he but I who moved you?"                                                
  But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people         
understood this.                                                            
                                                     {EP1|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  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?                                     
                                                     {EP1|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                            
                                                                            
EP1|CH5                                                                     
  CHAPTER V                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Natasha's wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the          
last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov        
died that same year and, as always happens, after the father's death        
the family group broke up.                                                  
  The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the            
flight from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha's despair, Petya's      
death, and the old countess' grief fell blow after blow on the old          
count's head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of           
all these events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if         
expecting and inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed      
now frightened and distraught and now unnaturally animated and              
enterprising.                                                               
  The arrangements for Natasha's marriage occupied him for a while. He      
ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful,         
but his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the            
contrary it evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.          
  When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to        
complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his        
bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again,             
despite the doctor's encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in      
an armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave           
him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last        
day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for            
having dissipated their property- that being the chief fault of             
which he was conscious. After receiving communion and unction he            
quietly died; and next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay        
their last respects to the deceased filled the house rented by the          
Rostovs. All these acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at      
his house and had so often laughed at him, now said, with a common          
feeling of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves:          
"Well, whatever he may have been he was a most worthy man. You don't        
meet such men nowadays.... And which of us has not weaknesses of his        
own?"                                                                       
  It was just when the count's affairs had become so involved that          
it was impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year         
that he unexpectedly died.                                                  
                                                      {EP1|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his          
father's death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and         
without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went        
to Moscow. The state of the count's affairs became quite obvious a          
month after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of          
small debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts          
amounted to double the value of the property.                               
  Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance.        
But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father's memory, which      
he held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and                
accepted the inheritance together with the obligation to pay the            
debts.                                                                      
  The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague but      
powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count's            
careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once.        
As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should        
get paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given      
them as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors.             
Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed      
to pity the old man- the cause of their losses (if they were                
losses)- now remorselessly pursued the young heir who had                   
voluntarily undertaken the debts and was obviously not guilty of            
contracting them.                                                           
  Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold        
by auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained            
unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his         
brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely           
due for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the               
remainder, as the creditors threatened, he re-entered the government        
service.                                                                    
  He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel        
at the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold        
on life; and so despite his reluctant to remain in Moscow among people      
who had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil           
service, he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the           
uniform of which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sonya        
to a small house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.                                    
                                                     {EP1|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
  Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had          
no clear idea of Nicholas' circumstances. Having borrowed money from        
his brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from      
him. His position was the more difficult because with his salary of         
twelve hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and      
Sonya, but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty.        
The countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious               
conditions she had been used to from childhood and, unable to               
realize how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage          
(which they did not keep) to send for a friend, now some expensive          
article of food for herself, or wine for her son, or money to buy a         
present as a surprise for Natasha or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.        
  Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her      
whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their             
poverty from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably           
indebted to Sonya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly          
admired her patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.        
  He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and         
because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that            
people are valued for, but little that could have made him love her.        
He felt that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had           
taken her at her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now         
behaved as if all that had passed between them had been long forgotten      
and could never in any case be renewed.                                     
  Nicholas' position became worse and worse. The idea of putting            
something aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he           
not save anything, but to comply with his mother's demands he even          
incurred some small debts. He could see no way out of this                  
situation. The idea of marrying some rich woman, which was suggested        
to him by his female relations, was repugnant to him. The other way         
out- his mother's death- never entered his head. He wished for nothing      
and hoped for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy           
and stern satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his                 
position. He tried to avoid his old acquaintances with their                
commiseration and offensive offers of assistance; he avoided all            
distraction and recreation, and even at home did nothing but play           
cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the room, and smoke        
one pipe after another. He seemed carefully to cherish within               
himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled him to endure his               
position.                                                                   
                                                                            
EP1|CH6                                                                     
  CHAPTER VI                                                                
-                                                                           
  At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From             
reports current in town she learned how the Rostovs were situated, and      
how "the son has sacrificed himself for his mother," as people were         
saying.                                                                     
  "I never expected anything else of him," said Princess Mary to            
herself, feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her        
friendly relations with all the Rostovs which had made her almost a         
member of the family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But        
remembering her relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy             
about doing so. Making a great effort she did however go to call on         
them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow.                               
  Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess' room could only      
be reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure          
as she had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a          
cold, stiff, proud expression she had not seen on it before. He             
inquired about her health, led the way to his mother, and having sat        
there for five minutes left the room.                                       
  When the princess came out of the countess' room Nicholas met her         
again, and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to           
the anteroom. To her remarks about his mother's health he made no           
reply. "What's that to you? Leave me in peace," his looks seemed to         
say.                                                                        
  "Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can't bear        
these ladies and all these civilities!" said he aloud in Sonya's            
presence, evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the               
princess' carriage had disappeared.                                         
                                                      {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  "Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?" cried Sonya, hardly able      
to conceal her delight. "She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!"       
  Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess        
any more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several         
times a day.                                                                
  She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her,             
expressed a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored        
when she began to talk about her.                                           
  Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the               
princess, but his silence irritated her.                                    
  "She is a very admirable and excellent young woman," said she,            
"and you must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing              
somebody, and I think it must be dull for you only seeing us."              
                                                     {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  "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."                                                      
                                                     {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  "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.                                                         
                                                     {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 20}
  After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly reception      
by Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been           
right in not wishing to be the first to call.                               
  "I expected nothing else," she told herself, calling her pride to         
her aid. "I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the        
old lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many             
obligations."                                                               
  But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling        
akin to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she      
had firmly resolved not to call on the Rostovs again and to forget the      
whole matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position.         
And when she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit            
that it was her relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not         
express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed                
something, and until she could discover what that something was, she        
felt that she could not be at ease.                                         
  One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her      
nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostov had called. With a firm      
resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she            
sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.      
  Her first glance at Nicholas' face told her that he had only come to      
fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain      
the tone in which he addressed her.                                         
                                                     {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 25}
  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.                                  
                                                     {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 30}
  "Oh, I beg your pardon," she said as if waking up. "Are you going         
already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the             
countess!"                                                                  
  "Wait a moment, I'll fetch it," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she      
left the room.                                                              
  They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.           
  "Yes, Princess," said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't      
seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo, but how much water         
has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then,           
yet I would give much to bring back that time... but there's no             
bringing it back."                                                          
  Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous          
ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden          
meaning of his words which would explain his feeling for her.               
                                                     {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 35}
  "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."        
                                                     {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 40}
  "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!"                                                                 
                                                     {EP1|CH6 ^paragraph 45}
  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.                                 
                                                                            
EP1|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to         
Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.                            
  Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without         
selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small             
inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as          
well.                                                                       
  In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs            
that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was         
negotiating to buy back Otradnoe- that being his pet dream.                 
  Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it      
that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas        
was a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the             
English ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical              
treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of          
expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not      
make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He           
always had before his mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any          
particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not the              
nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, nor           
special plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen,             
oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective- the peasant laborer.          
When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its               
different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his            
attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a          
judge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs,      
trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad,      
and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality          
learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and their         
judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the          
peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their                 
language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to      
them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform           
toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' management            
produced very brilliant results.                                            
  Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the        
estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and      
delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they      
had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before        
analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and      
credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle           
the peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He         
kept the peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not      
allowing the family groups to divide into separate households. He           
was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to        
get them expelled from the commune.                                         
                                                      {EP1|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  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.              
                                                     {EP1|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's and            
regretted that she could not share it; but she could not understand         
the joys and vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote         
and alien. She could not understand why he was so particularly              
animated and happy when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the      
whole morning in the fields or on the threshing floor, he returned          
from the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her. She did not      
understand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the             
farming of the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, who         
with his family had carted corn all night; or of the fact that his          
(Nicholas') sheaves were already stacked before anyone else had his         
harvest in. She did not understand why he stepped out from the              
window to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked so           
joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry and thirsty        
shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away a               
threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return from the           
barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and      
gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say:            
"Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be under        
cover."                                                                     
  Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready        
to anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she           
brought him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed      
to her to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should          
obstinately refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what         
was not her business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved         
passionately and which had laws she had not fathomed.                       
  Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work      
he was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in the        
least; it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good!      
That's all poetry and old wives' talk- all that doing good to one's         
neighbor! What I want is that our children should not have to go            
begging. I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all.      
And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That's all           
about it!" said he, clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, of          
course," he added, "for if the peasant is naked and hungry and has          
only one miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself or           
for me."                                                                    
  And all Nicholas did was fruitful- probably just because he               
refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for      
virtue's sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring          
estates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the           
memory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs.        
"He was a master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Of        
course he was not to be trifled with either- in a word, he was a            
real master!"                                                               
                                                                            
EP1|CH8                                                                     
  CHAPTER VIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas,      
and that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of         
making free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in      
this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form          
of punishment suddenly changed.                                             
  Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a      
man who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused        
of dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the        
porch to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few      
replies the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch      
Nicholas went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over           
her embroidery frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had            
been doing that morning. Among other things he spoke of the                 
Bogucharovo elder. Countess Mary turned red and then pale, but              
continued to sit with head bowed and lips compressed and gave her           
husband no reply.                                                           
  "Such an insolent scoundrel!" he cried, growing hot again at the          
mere recollection of him. "If he had told me he was drunk and did           
not see... But what is the matter with you, Mary?" he suddenly asked.       
  Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked      
down again and her lips puckered.                                           
  "Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?"                                
                                                      {EP1|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                          
                                                     {EP1|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  The tears flowed faster still from the countess' eyes. She took           
his hand and kissed it.                                                     
  "Nicholas, when when did you break your cameo?" she asked to              
change the subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with      
a cameo of Laocoon's head.                                                  
  "Today- it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don't remind me of it!"         
and again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan't occur          
again, and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the      
broken ring.                                                                
  After that, when in discussions with his village elders or                
stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench,        
Nicholas would turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his        
eyes before the man who was making him angry. But he did forget             
himself once or twice within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and        
confess to his wife, and would again promise that this should really        
be the very last time.                                                      
  "Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it."                
                                                     {EP1|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  "You should go, go away at once, if you don't feel strong enough          
to control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her          
husband.                                                                    
  Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not           
liked. He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class,      
and consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid.      
The whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with           
the work on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the      
same business like seriousness- leaving home for a month, or even two,      
with his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his         
time reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on             
these he spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he           
said, a serious library, and he made it a rule to read through all the      
books he bought. He would sit in his study with a grave air,                
reading- a task he first imposed upon himself as a duty, but which          
afterwards became a habit affording him a special kind of pleasure and      
a consciousness of being occupied with serious matters. In winter,          
except for business excursions, he spent most of his time at home           
making himself one with his family and entering into all the details        
of his children's relations with their mother. The harmony between him      
and his wife grew closer and closer and he daily discovered fresh           
spiritual treasures in her.                                                 
  From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before        
that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself        
and Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess        
Mary to be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized           
the wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and          
imagined that her wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could         
not find fault with Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her,           
but often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome.            
  Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about         
her own injustice toward her.                                               
  "You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal-        
there is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."                           
                                                     {EP1|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  "What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.                                   
  "'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not             
shall be taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I        
don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is        
taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am              
dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to           
marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not        
come off. She is a sterile flower, you know- like some strawberry           
blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she           
doesn't feel it as you or I would."                                         
  Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel          
must be understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with        
Natasha's explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her         
position trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a             
sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of      
the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the      
people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and          
spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services         
for which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from      
her with insufficient gratitude.                                            
  The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the        
same scale as under the old prince.                                         
  The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more            
than simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of          
wood, plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished      
with very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by          
their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was         
spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for               
visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations          
sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of              
servants and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a year, on         
the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred              
visitors would gather there for a day or two. The rest of the year          
life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and        
its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers, provided out of the          
produce of the estate.                                                      
                                                                            
EP1|CH9                                                                     
  CHAPTER IX                                                                
-                                                                           
  It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha      
had been staying at her brother's with her husband and children             
since early autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his        
own for three weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven         
weeks and was expected back every minute.                                   
  Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired             
General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this           
fifth of December.                                                          
  On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of      
visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for      
a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to        
the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would            
come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about           
the elections of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to        
spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined the                 
bailiff's accounts of the village in Ryazan which belonged to his           
wife's nephew, wrote two business letters, and walked over to the           
granaries, cattle yards and stables before dinner. Having taken             
precautions against the general drunkenness to be expected on the           
morrow because it was a great saint's day, he returned to dinner,           
and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at        
the long table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household        
had assembled. At that table were his mother, his mother's old lady         
companion Belova, his wife, their three children with their                 
governess and tutor, his wife's nephew with his tutor, Sonya, Denisov,      
Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael               
Ivanovich, the late prince's architect, who was living on in                
retirement at Bald Hills.                                                   
  Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband         
took his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after          
taking up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass         
standing before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the         
case when he came in to dinner straight from the farm- especially           
before the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when         
she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had      
his soup and then began to talk to him and make him admit that there        
was no cause for his ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and         
was hurt that he should be angry with her without any reason, and           
she felt unhappy. She asked him where he had been. He replied. She          
again inquired whether everything was going well on the farm. Her           
unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he replied hastily.          
  "Then I'm not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross          
with me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and        
wished to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded                
unnatural, but could not refrain from asking some more questions.           
                                                      {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general           
and lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the         
table and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary            
held out her hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was          
angry with her.                                                             
  "You always have such strange fancies! I didn't even think of             
being angry," he replied.                                                   
  But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I        
won't tell you why."                                                        
  Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya           
and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to         
disagree, could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they           
had their moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always            
just after they had been happiest together, they suddenly had a             
feeling of estrangement and hostility, which occurred most                  
frequently during Countess Mary's pregnancies, and this was such a          
time.                                                                       
  "Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with              
apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on         
purpose to vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning.        
Tomorrow I shall have to suffer, so today I'll go and rest."                
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room         
and lay down on the sofa.                                                   
  "That's always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to              
everyone except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him,              
especially when I am in this condition." She looked down at her             
expanded figure and in the glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face        
in which her eyes now looked larger than ever.                              
  And everything annoyed her- Denisov's shouting and laughter,              
Natasha's talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.               
  Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling         
irritated.                                                                  
  Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything        
of what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the          
nursery.                                                                    
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of      
chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with        
them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable          
crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with               
difficulty, went to the small sitting room.                                 
  "Perhaps he is not asleep; I'll have an explanation with him," she        
said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his               
mother, followed her on tiptoe. She not notice him.                         
  "Mary, dear, I think he is asleep- he was so tired," said Sonya,          
meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that      
she crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him."                    
  Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt         
that Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with             
evident difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made          
no reply, but to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow           
her quietly and went to the door. Sonya went away by another door.          
From the room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his          
even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to his           
wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth handsome          
forehead, his mustache, and his whole face, as she had so often seen        
it in the stillness of the night when he slept. Nicholas suddenly           
moved and cleared his throat. And at that moment little Andrew shouted      
from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma's standing here!" Countess Mary         
turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He grew silent, and      
quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess Mary. She knew how          
Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through the door she heard              
Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and his voice said         
crossly:                                                                    
  "I can't get a moment's peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you          
bring him here?"                                                            
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  "I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..."              
  Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the      
door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little        
black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father's pet, having learned         
from her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting          
room, ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little      
girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with              
energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having examined the          
position of her father, who was asleep with his back to her, rose on        
tiptoe and kissed the hand which lay under his head. Nicholas turned        
with a tender smile on his face.                                            
  "Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary's frightened whisper from the      
door. "Papa wants to sleep."                                                
  "No, Mamma, he doesn't want to sleep," said little Natasha with           
conviction. "He's laughing."                                                
  Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.       
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 25}
  "Come in, Mary," he said to his wife.                                     
  She went in and sat down by her husband.                                  
  "I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just            
looked in."                                                                 
  Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife        
and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and         
kissed her hair.                                                            
  "May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha.                                     
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 30}
  Natasha smiled bashfully.                                                 
  "Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the         
spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss.                                    
  "I don't know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying          
to the question he knew was in his wife's mind.                             
  "You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are            
like that. It always seems to me... "                                       
  "Mary, don't talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he      
said gaily.                                                                 
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 35}
  "It seems to be that you can't love me, that I am so plain...             
always... and now... in this cond..."                                       
  "Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it's love         
that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind        
who are loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don't love         
her, but... I don't know how to put it. Without you, or when something      
comes between us like this, I seem lost and can't do anything. Now          
do I love my finger? I don't love it, but just try to cut it off!           
  "I'm not like that myself, but I understand. So you're not angry          
with me?"                                                                   
  "Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing           
his hair he began to pace the room.                                         
  "Do you know, Mary, what I've been thinking?" he began,                   
immediately thinking aloud in his wife's presence now that they had         
made it up.                                                                 
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 40}
  He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A      
thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he          
told her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till         
spring.                                                                     
  Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and        
in her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the               
children.                                                                   
  "You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing      
to little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here        
is our logic. I say: 'Papa wants to sleep!' but she says, 'No, he's         
laughing.' And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile.       
  "Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong        
hand, lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the          
legs, and paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree      
happiness on the faces of both father and daughter.                         
  "But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one,"           
his wife whispered in French.                                               
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 45}
  "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.               
                                                     {EP1|CH9 ^paragraph 50}
  "It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering           
the room a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You        
should have seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed        
away so long. Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two         
were parted," she added, looking smilingly at the little girl who           
clung to her father.                                                        
  Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.                          
  Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.                               
  "I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy,"         
she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time      
she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though           
she felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of              
happiness unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily          
thought at that instant.                                                    
                                                                            
EP1|CH10                                                                    
  CHAPTER X                                                                 
-                                                                           
  Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already      
had three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she      
was now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was          
difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively      
Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm,      
soft, and serene expression. In her face there was none of the              
ever-glowing animation that had formerly burned there and                   
constituted its charm. Now her face and body were of all that one saw,      
and her soul was not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a          
strong, handsome, and fertile woman. The old fire very rarely               
kindled in her face now. That happened only when, as was the case that      
day, her husband returned home, or a sick child was convalescent, or        
when she and Countess Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she never mentioned      
him to her husband, who she imagined was jealous of Prince Andrew's         
memory), or on the rare occasions when something happened to induce         
her to sing, a practice she had quite abandoned since her marriage. At      
the rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome, fully        
developed body she was even more attractive than in former days.            
  Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in      
Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is        
to say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often      
seen in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her      
and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked        
solitude- she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even            
thought that she did not- but with her pregnancies, her                     
confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of      
her husband's life, she had demands on her time which could be              
satisfied only by renouncing society. All who had known Natasha before      
her marriage wondered at the change in her as at something                  
extraordinary. Only the old countess with her maternal instinct had         
realized that all Natasha's outbursts had been due to her need of           
children and a husband- as she herself had once exclaimed at                
Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest- and her mother was now           
surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never                  
understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that      
Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother.                            
  "Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all          
bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."               
  Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,          
especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let             
herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments,        
should be even more careful of her appearance than when she was             
unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as much as she did              
before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once           
abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually      
powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully             
seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with of speech, or         
with her toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most              
becoming attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing him by being too            
exacting. She acted in contradiction to all those rules. She felt that      
the allurements instinct had formerly taught her to use would now be        
merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had from the      
first moment given herself up entirely- that is, with her whole             
soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from him. She felt that her unity      
with her husband was not maintained by the poetic feelings that had         
attracted him to her, but by something else- indefinite but firm as         
the bond between her own body and soul.                                     
  To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing              
romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange        
as to adorn herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others         
might perhaps have been agreeable- she did not know- but she had no         
time at all for it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to         
singing, to dress, or to choosing her words was that she really had no      
time to spare for these things.                                             
                                                     {EP1|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed          
in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject        
so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's           
entire attention is devoted to it.                                          
  The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her            
family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should         
belong entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she           
had to bear, bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.                     
  And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her        
whole soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the        
larger did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did         
her powers appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one         
thing and yet was unable to accomplish all that she considered              
necessary.                                                                  
  There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's        
rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and             
rights, though these themes were not yet termed questions as they           
are now; but these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha,         
she positively did not understand them.                                     
  These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing      
in marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that      
is, only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance,         
which lies in the family.                                                   
                                                    {EP1|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the                
question of how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner,        
did not then and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of         
a dinner is the nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is      
the family.                                                                 
  If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats           
two dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain      
his purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.               
  If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to        
have many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in        
that case will not have a family.                                           
  If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is      
the family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more         
than one can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are         
needed for the family- that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha            
needed a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a family.         
And she not only saw no need of any other or better husband, but as         
all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that husband and          
family, she could not imagine and saw no interest in imagining how          
it would be if things were different.                                       
  Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the      
society of her relatives- Countess Mary, and her brother, her               
mother, and Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could        
come striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and         
with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby's           
napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect         
that baby was much better.                                                  
                                                    {EP1|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she             
dressed and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy-           
she was jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty      
or plain- were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The            
general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife's thumb, which           
was really true. From the very first days of their married life             
Natasha had announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his      
wife's view, to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his         
life belonged to her and to the family. His wife's demands                  
astonished him, but they also flattered him, and he submitted to them.      
  Pierre's subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not      
flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman;         
did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money a      
whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except        
on business- in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits,          
which she did not in the least understand but to which she                  
attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had        
the right to regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as      
he chose. At home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to      
her husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was             
occupied- that is, was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but      
to show a partiality for anything to get just what he liked done            
always. He had only to express a wish and Natasha would jump up and         
run to fulfill it.                                                          
  The entire household was governed according to Pierre's supposed          
orders, that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way      
of life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties,               
Natasha's occupations, the children's upbringing, were all selected         
not merely with regard to Pierre's expressed wishes, but to what            
Natasha from the thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his         
wishes to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite            
correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them                    
tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would        
fight him with his own weapons.                                             
  Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of        
their first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet         
nurse three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day         
told her of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to            
have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was           
born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of        
her husband himself- who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing         
her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious-         
she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her           
babies herself.                                                             
  It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and         
wife would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his                
surprise and delight would find in his wife's ideas and actions the         
very thought against which she had argued, but divested of                  
everything superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he had         
added when expressing his opinion.                                          
                                                    {EP1|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                                           
                                                                            
EP1|CH11                                                                    
  CHAPTER XI                                                                
-                                                                           
  Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the            
Rostovs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to        
come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were          
being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the           
principal founders.                                                         
  On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters)            
Natasha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though           
she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense             
importance to all her husband's intellectual and abstract interests         
though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a          
hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry         
after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a      
definite date for his return. He was given four weeks' leave of             
absence.                                                                    
  Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a                 
fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm,            
depression, and irritability.                                               
  Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied          
with the present state of affairs, had arrived during that                  
fortnight. He looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad        
likeness of a person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies,      
and talk about the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former         
enchantress.                                                                
  Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her          
mother, her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to            
console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay      
in returning.                                                               
                                                     {EP1|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  "It's all nonsense, all rubbish- those discussions which lead to          
nothing and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very      
affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.             
  And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one      
else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this         
little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she           
was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his          
little nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous,           
you would like to pay him out, you are afraid- but here am I! And I am      
he..." and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.                    
  During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for         
comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him         
and he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was         
just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety           
about her husband more easily.                                              
  She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was             
heard at the front door, and the old nurse- knowing how to please           
her mistress- entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a           
beaming face.                                                               
  "Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move         
lest she should rouse the dozing baby.                                      
                                                    {EP1|CH11 ^paragraph 10}
  "He's come, ma'am," whispered the nurse.                                  
  The blood rushed to Natasha's face and her feet involuntarily moved,      
but she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his            
eyes and looked at her. "You're here?" he seemed to be saying, and          
again lazily smacked his lips.                                              
  Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little,           
handed him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door.         
But at the door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for         
having in her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round.           
The nurse with raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of        
his cot.                                                                    
  "Go, ma'am! Don't worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the            
kind of familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.         
  Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.                         
                                                    {EP1|CH11 ^paragraph 15}
  Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with         
his pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood        
of brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.               
  "He's come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he      
too was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had           
returned.                                                                   
  On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat         
unwinding his scarf. "It's he! It's really he! He has come!" she            
said to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head          
to her breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy,             
happy face, covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and               
contented..."                                                               
  Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had          
experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her         
face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of         
reproaches and angry words.                                                 
  "Yes, it's all very well for you. You are pleased, you've had a good      
time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown                   
consideration for the children. I am nursing and my milk was                
spoiled.... Petya was at death's door. But you were enjoying yourself.      
Yes, enjoying..."                                                           
                                                    {EP1|CH11 ^paragraph 20}
  Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come               
sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a         
minute or two; above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy.      
He wanted to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a          
piteous, frightened face and bent down.                                     
  "I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?"                             
  "All right now. Come along! I wonder you're not ashamed! If only you      
could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!"                     
  "You are well?"                                                           
  "Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went          
to their rooms.                                                             
                                                    {EP1|CH11 ^paragraph 25}
  When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the          
nursery holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right        
palm and dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby's      
broad face with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since          
over and there was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha's face as she         
gazed tenderly at her husband and child.                                    
  "And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she      
asked.                                                                      
  "Yes, capitally."                                                         
  "You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby's head.) "But how          
he did frighten me... You've seen the princess? Is it true she's in         
love with that..."                                                          
  "Yes, just fancy..."                                                      
                                                    {EP1|CH11 ^paragraph 30}
  At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the        
baby on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries.      
But in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the      
baby with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all        
his attention.                                                              
  "How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the          
baby. "Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can't          
understand how it is you don't see the charm of these delicious             
marvels."                                                                   
  "I don't and can't," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby.        
"A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!"                                      
  "And yet he's such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary,           
vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..."      
  "Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his          
hand is just made for a baby's seat. Just look!"                            
                                                    {EP1|CH11 ^paragraph 35}
  "Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and        
shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.                                 
                                                                            
EP1|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
-                                                                           
  As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several             
perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole,           
though each retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the      
others. Every event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house           
was important to all these worlds, but each had its own special             
reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the      
others.                                                                     
  For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and        
they all felt it to be so.                                                  
  The servants- the most reliable judges of their masters because they      
judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their      
acts and way of life- were glad of Pierre's return because they knew        
that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day           
attend to the estate, and would would be in better spirits and temper,      
and also because they would all receive handsome presents for the           
holidays.                                                                   
  The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return           
because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as      
he did. He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only      
piece) to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced,           
and they felt sure he had brought presents for them all.                    
  Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,      
with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted               
because Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his                 
rapturous and passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this      
love for Pierre whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had        
brought him up had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she      
loved him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him            
with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did           
not want to be an hussar or a Knight of St. George like his uncle           
Nicholas; he wanted to be learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In           
Pierre's presence his face always shone with pleasure and he flushed        
and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He did not miss a              
single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or by          
himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had         
said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of which        
young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from some words he         
had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platon             
Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha           
(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially                
Pierre's friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not                 
remember- all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.              
                                                     {EP1|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion        
with which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful,          
reverent tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who           
was only just beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that      
his father had loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his             
friend. But the father whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a      
divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never thought            
without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the           
boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived.                                 
  The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and        
unite any company he was in.                                                
  The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were         
pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more             
smoothly and peacefully.                                                    
  The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and        
especially that Natasha would now be herself again.                         
  Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and            
made haste to satisfy all their expectations.                               
                                                    {EP1|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the      
aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not              
forgetting his mother- and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress      
material for a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews.          
In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that         
his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things          
he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious             
annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time          
he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for         
herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself           
had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and               
childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the         
house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natasha's censure      
it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other      
defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were              
qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added              
stinginess.                                                                 
  From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing         
entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he         
spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs- which had          
been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts-        
had begun to improve.                                                       
  Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive        
luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no          
longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had         
now been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not      
in his power, and so that way of life proved economical.                    
  With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.              
  "What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff          
like a shopman.                                                             
                                                    {EP1|CH12 ^paragraph 15}
  Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on      
her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the          
things he showed her.                                                       
  "That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the               
material. "It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"                            
  Pierre told her the price.                                                
  "Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be           
and Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added,           
unable to suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb           
set with pearls, of a kind then just coming into fashion.                   
  "Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned            
Pierre.                                                                     
                                                    {EP1|CH12 ^paragraph 20}
  "When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair.         
"When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be                
fashionable again by then. Well, let's go now."                             
  And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and            
then to the old countess' rooms.                                            
  The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing               
grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing      
room with parcels under their arms.                                         
  The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with      
a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper         
lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.                                     
  After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession,         
she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left      
without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or          
kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She         
wanted nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity            
only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on            
living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in         
very young children and very old people was particularly evident in         
her. Her life had no external aims- only a need to exercise her             
various functions and inclinations was apparent. She had to eat,            
sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger, and so on,         
merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a           
liver. She did these things not under any external impulse as people        
in the full vigor of life do, when behind the purpose for which they        
strive that of exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She            
talked only because she physically needed to exercise her tongue and        
lungs. She cried as a child does, because her nose had to be                
cleared, and so on. What for people in their full vigor is an aim           
was for her evidently merely a pretext.                                     
                                                    {EP1|CH12 ^paragraph 25}
  Thus in the morning- especially if she had eaten anything rich the        
day before- she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the          
handiest pretext Belova's deafness.                                         
  She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other      
end of the room.                                                            
  "It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.              
  And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter         
angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"                              
  Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or           
too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability        
her face would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible                
symptoms when Belova would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the           
countess' face yellow. Just as she needed to work off her spleen so         
she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of                 
thinking- and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she         
needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext. When she            
wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext,        
and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be          
Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was             
usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest          
in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same          
stories over and over again to the same audience.                           
                                                    {EP1|CH12 ^paragraph 30}
  The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household            
though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible            
effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a         
sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the      
common understanding of her condition expressed.                            
  But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had        
played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole           
self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to          
yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being           
formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be               
pitied. "Memento mori," said these glances.                                 
  Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and         
the little children failed to understand this and avoided her.              
                                                                            
EP1|CH13                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIII                                                              
-                                                                           
  When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was        
in one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion      
of playing patience, and so- though by force of habit she greeted           
him with the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned          
after an absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of      
waiting for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with           
another customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear,      
but that you give it to me, an old woman..."- yet it was evident            
that she was not pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it         
diverted her attention from the unfinished game.                            
  She finished her game of patience and only then examined the              
presents. They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid                    
workmanship, a bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses                
depicted on it and with a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count's         
portrait on the lid which Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in           
Petersburg. The countess had long wished for such a box, but as she         
did not want to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the              
portrait and gave her attention chiefly to the box for cards.               
  "Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always      
did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back- for I never           
saw anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are      
we to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away.               
Doesn't see anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on,              
repeating her usual phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her      
companion, "see what a box for cards my son has brought us!"                
  Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress              
material.                                                                   
  Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had          
much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old               
countess- not that anything was hidden from her, but because she had        
dropped so far behindhand in many things that had they begun to             
converse in her presence they would have had to answer inopportune          
questions and to repeat what they had already told her many times:          
that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would          
again be unable to remember- yet they sat at tea round the samovar          
in the drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered the countess'           
questions as to whether Prince Vasili had aged and whether Countess         
Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings and still thought of them, and other      
matters that interested no one and to which she herself was                 
indifferent.                                                                
                                                     {EP1|CH13 ^paragraph 5}
  Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,         
continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the              
family were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided      
beside the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had      
had tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all        
sat in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small        
table where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi           
bitch (daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and             
large black eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the           
armchair beside him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers      
had turned half gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general's           
tunic unbuttoned; Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He      
spoke of what he knew might interest the old lady and that she could        
understand. He told her of external social events and of the people         
who had formed the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a         
real, living, and distinct group, but who were now for the most part        
scattered about the world and like herself were garnering the last          
ears of the harvests they had sown in earlier years. But to the old         
countess those contemporaries of hers seemed to be the only serious         
and real society. Natasha saw by Pierre's animation that his visit had      
been interesting and that he had much to tell them but dare not say it      
before the old countess. Denisov, not being a member of the family,         
did not understand Pierre's caution and being, as a malcontent, much        
interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre          
to tell them about what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment, then        
about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society. Once or twice            
Pierre was carried away and began to speak of these things, but             
Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the health of Prince        
Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.                                           
  "Well, and all this idiocy- Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov              
asked. "Is that weally still going on?"                                     
  "Going on?" Pierre exclaimed. "Why more than ever! The Bible Society      
is the whole government now!"                                               
   "What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had                
finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry             
after her meal. "What are you saying about the government? I don't          
understand."                                                                
  "Well, you know, Maman," Nicholas interposed, knowing how to              
translate things into his mother's language, "Prince Alexander              
Golitsyn has founded a society and in consequence has great influence,      
they say."                                                                  
                                                    {EP1|CH13 ^paragraph 10}
  "Arakcheev and Golitsyn," incautiously remarked Pierre, "are now the      
whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere        
and are afraid of everything."                                              
  "Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most                 
estimable man. I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna's," said the            
countess in an offended tone; and still more offended that they all         
remained silent, she went on: "Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel      
Society! Well, and what harm is there in that?" and she rose                
(everybody else got up too) and with a severe expression sailed back        
to her table in the sitting room.                                           
  The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the      
children's voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some           
jolly excitement was going on there.                                        
  "Finished, finished!" little Natasha's gleeful yell rose above            
them all.                                                                   
  Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he      
never lost sight of) and smiled happily.                                    
                                                    {EP1|CH13 ^paragraph 15}
  "That's delightful music!" said he.                                       
  "It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stocking," said            
Countess Mary.                                                              
  "Oh, I'll go and see," said Pierre, jumping up. "You know," he            
added, stopping at the door, "why I'm especially fond of that music?        
It is always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was          
driving here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I        
grew. As I entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha's peals of laughter        
and that meant that all was well."                                          
  "I know! I know that feeling," said Nicholas. "But I mustn't go           
there- those stockings are to be a surprise for me."                        
  Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew           
still louder.                                                               
                                                    {EP1|CH13 ^paragraph 20}
  "Come, Anna Makarovna," Pierre's voice was heard saying, "come            
here into the middle of the room and at the word of command, 'One,          
two,' and when I say 'three'... You stand here, and you in my arms-         
well now! One, two!..." said Pierre, and a silence followed:                
"three!" and a rapturously breathless cry of children's voices              
filled the room. "Two, two!" they shouted.                                  
  This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to         
herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same            
needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly           
drew, one out of the other, in the children's presence.                     
                                                                            
EP1|CH14                                                                    
  CHAPTER XIV                                                               
-                                                                           
  Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They              
kissed everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and            
they went out. Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles        
whispered to the boy to come downstairs.                                    
  "No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied      
Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.                                       
  "Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt.            
  His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary        
glanced at him and turned to Pierre.                                        
  "When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said.                 
                                                     {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 5}
  "I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good               
night!" said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned      
to young Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of         
one another yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing      
Countess Mary.                                                              
  "Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up          
at Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.                                       
  Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the          
children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork;            
Natasha did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov         
rose, asked for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from            
Sonya- who sat weary but resolute at the samovar- and questioned            
Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed      
in a corner, starting every now and then and muttering something to         
himself, and evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he        
turned his curly head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down          
collar, toward the place where Pierre sat.                                  
  The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in         
power, in which most people see the chief interest of home politics.        
Denisov, dissatisfied with the government on account of his own             
disappointments in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done      
in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and             
sharp comments on what Pierre told them.                                    
  "One used to have to be a German- now one must dance with Tatawinova      
and Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they      
should let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose- he'd knock all this             
nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment      
to a fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried.                                  
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 10}
  Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with         
everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a            
very serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been               
appointed Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that         
the Emperor had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed          
to him very important. And so he thought it necessary to take an            
interest in these things and to question Pierre. The questions put          
by these two kept the conversation from changing its ordinary               
character of gossip about the higher government circles.                    
  But Natasha, knowing all her husband's ways and ideas, saw that he        
had long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation        
to another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake        
of which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend           
Prince Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with          
Prince Theodore had gone.                                                   
  "What was it about?" asked Nicholas.                                      
  "Always the same thing," said Pierre, looking round at his                
listeners. "Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they         
cannot be allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent         
men to counteract it as far as they can."                                   
  "What can decent men do?" Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly.           
"What can be done?"                                                         
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 15}
  "Why, this..."                                                            
  "Come into my study," said Nicholas.                                      
  Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby,           
now heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary      
followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas               
Bolkonski followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the          
writing table in a shady corner by the window.                              
  "Well, what would you do?" asked Denisov.                                 
  "Always some fantastic schemes," said Nicholas.                           
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 20}
  "Why this," began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room,           
sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: "the position in      
Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He has         
abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not           
tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and            
only these people sans foi ni loi* can give it him- people who              
recklessly hack at and strangle everything- Magnitski, Arakcheev,           
and tutti quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after          
your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your        
steward was the more readily your object might be attained," he said        
to Nicholas.                                                                
-                                                                           
  *Without faith or law.                                                    
-                                                                           
  "Well, what does that lead up to?" said Nicholas.                         
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 25}
  "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?"                                                       
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 30}
  "Why? Let him be," said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and            
continuing. "That is not enough, I told them. Something else is             
needed. When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at         
any moment, when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe,          
as many as possible must join hands as closely as they can to               
withstand the general calamity. Everything that is young and strong is      
being enticed away and depraved. One is lured by women, another by          
honors, a third by ambition or money, and they go over to that camp.        
No independent men, such as you or I, are left. What I say is widen         
the scope of our society, let the mot d'ordre be not virtue alone           
but independence and action as well!"                                       
  Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an                 
armchair, sat down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing                  
discontentedly and frowning more and more.                                  
  "But action with what aim?" he cried. "And what position will you         
adopt toward the government?"                                               
  "Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret          
if the government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to                
government, but it is a society of true conservatives- a society of         
gentlemen in the full meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some      
Pugachev or other from killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev         
from sending me off to some Military Settlement. We join hands only         
for the public welfare and the general safety."                             
  "Yes, but it's a secret society and therefore a hostile and               
harmful one which can only cause harm."                                     
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 35}
  "Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe" (they did not then           
venture to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) "do any harm? The          
Tugendbund is an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it          
is what Christ preached on the Cross."                                      
  Natasha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at      
her husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her- that           
did not even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely      
simple and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her           
because she knew that it sprang from Pierre's whole soul), but it           
was his animated and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.            
  The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down collar-      
whom everyone had forgotten- gazed at Pierre with even greater and          
more rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre's burned into his heart,           
and with a nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke           
the sealing wax and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle's           
table.                                                                      
  "It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German           
Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing."                                   
  "No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage           
eaters, but I don't understand it and can't even pwonounce it,"             
interposed Denisov in a loud and resolute voice. "I agwee that              
evewything here is wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don't          
understand. If we're not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own.          
That's all wight. Je suis vot'e homme!"*                                    
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 40}
-                                                                           
  *"I'm your man."                                                          
-                                                                           
  Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his           
brows still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no              
prospect of any great change and that all the danger he spoke of            
existed only in his imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and        
as his mental faculties were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas         
felt himself cornered. This made him still angrier, for he was fully        
convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him stronger            
than reason, of the justice of his opinion.                                 
  "I will tell you this," he said, rising and trying with nervously         
twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally              
abandoning the attempt. "I can't prove it to you. You say that              
everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't see      
it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional           
matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know, but      
if you formed a secret society and began working against the                
government- be it what it may- I know it is my duty to obey the             
government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you      
and cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.'      
And you may argue about that as you like!"                                  
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 45}
  An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to         
speak, defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense         
was weak and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was        
resumed, and no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas'        
last remark.                                                                
  When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkonski        
went up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.                     
  "Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree          
with you?" he asked.                                                        
  And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex,        
and powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in      
this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said          
he regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to        
give him an answer.                                                         
  "Yes, I think so," he said reluctantly, and left the study.               
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 50}
  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.                                                          
                                                    {EP1|CH14 ^paragraph 55}
  "You ought not to have been here at all," he said.                        
                                                                            
EP1|CH15                                                                    
  CHAPTER XV                                                                
-                                                                           
  The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies,           
but turned on the subject Nicholas liked best- recollections of             
1812. Denisov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable           
and amusing about them. The family separated on the most friendly           
terms.                                                                      
  After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given            
instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to           
the bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her      
table, writing.                                                             
  "What are you writing, Mary?" Nicholas asked.                             
  Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing           
would not be understood or approved by her husband.                         
  She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at           
the same time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would        
now have to tell him.                                                       
                                                     {EP1|CH15 ^paragraph 5}
  "A diary, Nicholas," she replied, handing him a blue exercise book        
filled with her firm, bold writing.                                         
  "A diary?" Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up        
the book.                                                                   
  It was in French.                                                         
-                                                                           
  December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy) woke up he did           
not wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was               
naughty and obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then      
I took the matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's          
help to get the other children up, telling him that I did not love          
him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped        
out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not          
calm him for a long time. It was plain that what troubled him most was      
that he had grieved me. Afterwards in the evening when I gave him           
his ticket, he again began crying piteously and kissing me. One can do      
anything with him by tenderness.                                            
                                                    {EP1|CH15 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  "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:                                           
                                                    {EP1|CH15 ^paragraph 15}
-                                                                           
  Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding.          
He had none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others             
while they were eating! I think that punishment by depriving                
children of sweets only develops their greediness. Must tell                
Nicholas this.                                                              
-                                                                           
  Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant            
eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her      
diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of         
his admiration for his wife.                                                
  Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or         
even done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of          
which the sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had      
Nicholas been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that         
his steady, tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling        
of wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost          
beyond his reach, in which she had her being.                               
                                                    {EP1|CH15 ^paragraph 20}
  He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own         
insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the      
more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part        
of himself.                                                                 
  "I quite, quite approve, my dearest!" said he with a significant          
look, and after a short pause he added: "And I behaved badly today.         
You weren't in the study. We began disputing- Pierre and I- and I lost      
my temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don't know what would      
become of him if Natasha didn't keep him in hand.... Have you any idea      
why he went to Petersburg? They have formed..."                             
  "Yes, I know," said Countess Mary. "Natasha told me."                     
  "Well, then, you know," Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere         
recollection of their discussion, "he wanted to convince me that it is      
every honest man's duty to go against the government, and that the          
oath of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren't there. They           
all fell on me- Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she           
rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no      
words of her own but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas,           
yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge          
those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying          
about Natasha could have been applied word for word to himself in           
relation to his wife.                                                       
  "Yes, I have noticed that," said Countess Mary.                           
                                                    {EP1|CH15 ^paragraph 25}
  "When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he         
started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there- what        
would you have said?"                                                       
  "As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so. Pierre          
says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that        
it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there,"          
said Countess Mary, "but he forgets that we have other duties nearer        
to us, duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might      
expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children."                   
  "Yes, that's it! That's just what I said to him," put in Nicholas,        
who fancied he really had said it. "But they insisted on their own          
view: love of one's neighbor and Christianity- and all this in the          
presence of young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all        
my things."                                                                 
  "Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little               
Nicholas," said Countess Mary. "He is such an exceptional boy. I am         
afraid I neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and           
relations while he has no one. He is constantly alone with his              
thoughts."                                                                  
  "Well, I don't think you need reproach yourself on his account.           
All that the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are      
doing for him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine      
lad! This evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and            
fancy- as we were going in to supper I looked and he had broken             
everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at             
once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!"         
repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but      
was always anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad.                     
                                                    {EP1|CH15 ^paragraph 30}
  "Still, I am not the same as his own mother," said Countess Mary. "I      
feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am        
dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have                 
companions."                                                                
  "Well it won't be for long. Next summer I'll take him to                  
Petersburg," said Nicholas. "Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and           
always will be," he continued, returning to the talk in the study           
which had evidently disturbed him. "Well, what business is it of            
mine what goes on there- whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that?            
What business was it of mine when I married and was so deep in debt         
that I was threatened with prison, and had a mother who could not           
see or understand it? And then there are you and the children and           
our affairs. Is it for my own pleasure that I am at the farm or in the      
office from morning to night? No, but I know I must work to comfort my      
mother, to repay you, and not to leave the children such beggars as         
I was."                                                                     
  Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread          
alone and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But        
she knew she must not say this and that it would be useless to do           
so. She only took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of         
approval and a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few                
minutes' reflection continued to think aloud.                               
  "You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych" (this was his overseer)         
"came back from the Tambov estate and told me they are already              
offering eighty thousand rubles for the forest."                            
  And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of      
repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: "Another ten years of         
life and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position."           
                                                    {EP1|CH15 ^paragraph 35}
  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.        
                                                                            
EP1|CH16                                                                    
  CHAPTER XVI                                                               
-                                                                           
  Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband      
and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity,      
understanding and expressing each other's thoughts in ways contrary to      
all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions,           
and in a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of            
talk with her husband that for her it was the surest sign of something      
being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical               
reasoning. When he began proving anything, or talking                       
argumentatively and calmly and she, led on by his example, began to do      
the same, she knew that they were on the verge of a quarrel.                
  From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up to him with           
wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her        
bosom, saying: "Now you are all mine, mine! You won't escape!"- from        
that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic      
and contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked           
about at one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many        
topics did not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was        
the surest sign that they fully understood one another.                     
  Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and                
contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this         
intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves            
were not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted           
them.                                                                       
  Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother's life and doings, of           
how she had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of         
how she was fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way         
better than herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in                  
acknowledging Mary's superiority, but at the same time by saying it         
she made a demand on Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her        
to Mary and to all other women, and that now, especially after              
having seen many women in Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.         
  Pierre, answering Natasha's words, told her how intolerable it had        
been for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.             
                                                     {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 5}
  "I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies," he said. "It was      
simply dull. Besides, I was very busy."                                     
  Natasha looked intently at him and went on:                               
  "Mary is so splendid," she said. "How she understands children! It        
is as if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance,        
Mitya was naughty..."                                                       
  "How like his father he is," Pierre interjected.                          
  Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya's likeness to Nicholas: the           
recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and      
he wanted to know what Natasha thought of it.                               
                                                    {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 10}
  "Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not            
generally accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a         
fresh line," said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered.             
  "No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are        
an amusement- almost a pastime," said Pierre. "For instance, he is          
collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till      
he has read what he had already bought- Sismondi and Rousseau and           
Montesquieu," he added with a smile. "You know how much I..." he began      
to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to show        
that this was unnecessary.                                                  
  "So you say ideas are an amusement to him...."                            
  "Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg      
I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all          
else is mere amusement."                                                    
  "Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children," said         
Natasha. "Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure."                        
                                                    {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 15}
  "Yes," Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind.             
"Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides,         
when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can this to you) that the whole          
affair would go to pieces without me- everyone was pulling his own          
way. But I succeeded in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear      
and simple. You see, I don't say that we ought to oppose this and           
that. We may be mistaken. What I say is: 'Join hands, you who love the      
right, and let there be but one banner- that of active virtue.' Prince      
Sergey is a fine fellow and clever."                                        
  Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's           
idea, but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and           
necessary to society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She          
wished to express this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether          
he is really cleverer than all the others?" she asked herself, and          
passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what      
he had said there was no one he had respected so highly as Platon           
Karataev.                                                                   
  "Do you know what I am thinking about?" she asked. "About Platon          
Karataev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?"                 
  Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood           
his wife's line of thought.                                                 
  "Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely         
trying to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not          
have understood... yet perhaps he would."                                   
                                                    {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 20}
  "I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!"          
  "No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection.          
"What he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so        
anxious to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and         
I should have been proud to let him see us. There now- you talk of          
my absence, but you wouldn't believe what a special feeling I have for      
you after a separation...."                                                 
  "Yes, I should think..." Natasha began.                                   
  "No, it's not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn't        
love more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course-" he did        
not finish because their eyes meeting said the rest.                        
  "What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed, "about                 
honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the             
contrary, now is the best of all. If only you did not go away! Do           
you remember how we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always           
mine. And what we quarreled about- I don't even remember!"                  
                                                    {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 25}
  "Always about the same thing," said Pierre with a smile. "Jealo..."       
  "Don't say it! I can't bear it!" Natasha cried, and her eyes              
glittered coldly and vindictively. "Did you see her?" she added, after      
a pause.                                                                    
  "No, and if I had I shouldn't have recognized her."                       
  They were silent for a while.                                             
  "Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was               
looking at you," Natasha began, evidently anxious to disperse the           
cloud that had come over them. "You are as like him as two peas-            
like the boy." (She meant her little son.) "Oh, it's time to go to          
him.... The milk's come.... But I'm sorry to leave you."                    
                                                    {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 30}
  They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one          
another at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with        
self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile.        
Having interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other           
continue.                                                                   
  "No. What did you say? Go on, go on."                                     
  "No, you go on, I was talking nonsense," said Natasha.                    
  Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his               
complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it      
seemed to him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the             
whole of Russian society and to the whole world.                            
  "I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are              
always simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united      
and constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now              
that's simple enough."                                                      
                                                    {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 35}
  "Yes."                                                                    
  "And what were you going to say?"                                         
  "I? Only nonsense."                                                       
  "But all the same?"                                                       
  "Oh nothing, only a trifle," said Natasha, smilingly still more           
brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was           
coming to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung        
to me. I'm sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now         
he's crying. Well, good-by!" and she left the room.                         
                                                    {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 40}
-                                                                           
  Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a              
little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark           
and they could not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four      
pillows and his Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring.              
Little Nicholas, who had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat          
up in bed and gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from      
a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing          
helmets such as were depicted in his Plutarch, were leading a huge          
army. The army was made up of white slanting lines that filled the air      
like the cobwebs that float about in autumn and which Dessalles called      
les fils de la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was similar to             
those threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre were borne along            
lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the         
threads that moved them began to slacken and become entangled and it        
grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a           
stern and threatening attitude.                                             
  "Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax        
and pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill      
the first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look at      
Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his father-         
Prince Andrew- and his father had neither shape nor form, but he            
existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with          
love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father             
caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer          
to them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he awoke.                         
  "My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of         
Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human            
form.) "My father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of          
me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it.              
Mucius Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing      
happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And I will learn. But           
someday I shall have finished learning, and then I will do                  
something. I only pray God that something may happen to me such as          
happened to Plutarch's men, and I will act as they did. I will do           
better. Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with me!"         
And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.                
  "Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking.                          
                                                    {EP1|CH16 ^paragraph 45}
  "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...."                                                     
                                                                            
EP2                                                                         
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                SECOND EPILOGUE                             
                                                                            
EP2|CH1                                                                     
  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.                 
                                                      {EP2|CH1 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                               
                                                     {EP2|CH1 ^paragraph 10}
  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.       
                                                     {EP2|CH1 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                                                      
                                                     {EP2|CH1 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                                              
                                                                            
EP2|CH2                                                                     
  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.                                                    
                                                      {EP2|CH2 ^paragraph 5}
  To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant              
force, the sum of the components must equal the resultant. This             
condition is never observed by the universal historians, and so to          
explain the resultant forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to      
the insufficient components, another unexplained force affecting the        
resultant action.                                                           
  Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the              
restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were           
produced by the will of Alexander. But the universal historian              
Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the specialist historian, tries          
to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons      
were due to other things beside Alexander's will- such as the activity      
of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte                   
Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently decomposes               
Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand, Chateaubriand,           
and the rest- but the sum of the components, that is, the interactions      
of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the others,              
evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of            
millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That                      
Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to           
one another only affected their mutual relations but does not               
account for the submission of millions. And therefore to explain how        
from these relations of theirs the submission of millions of people         
resulted- that is, how component forces equal to one A gave a               
resultant equal to a thousand times A- the historian is again               
obliged to fall back on power- the force he had denied- and to              
recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he has to             
admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is just        
what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only            
contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.             
  Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according        
to whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the          
clouds away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the          
same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them           
and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events,      
and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that             
power produces events.                                                      
  A third class of historians- the so-called historians of culture-         
following the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes      
accept writers and ladies as forces producing events- again take            
that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is          
called culture- in mental activity.                                         
  The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their         
progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical          
events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one        
another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that        
such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense              
number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these            
historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that      
this indication is the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove          
that the cause of events lies in intellectual activity, only by a           
great stretch can one admit that there is any connection between            
intellectual activity and the movement of peoples, and in no case           
can one admit that intellectual activity controls people's actions,         
for that view is not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders      
of the French Revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality        
of man, or the very cruel wars and executions resulting from the            
preaching of love.                                                          
                                                     {EP2|CH2 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                                  
                                                                            
EP2|CH3                                                                     
  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.                                                              
                                                      {EP2|CH3 ^paragraph 5}
  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."                                                                   
                                                                            
EP2|CH4                                                                     
  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.                                   
                                                      {EP2|CH4 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                     
                                                     {EP2|CH4 ^paragraph 10}
  From this fundamental difference between the view held by history         
and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell      
minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what            
power- existing immutably outside time- is, but to history's questions      
about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer           
nothing.                                                                    
  If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their        
ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If          
not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when          
he was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those            
criminals whom he arrested?                                                 
  Do palace revolutions- in which sometimes only two or three people        
take part- transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In               
international relations, is the will of the people also transferred to      
their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine             
transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people         
transferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the         
French went to fight the Austrians?                                         
  To these questions three answers are possible:                            
  Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always                
unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen,        
and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle           
against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as          
an infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the              
people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite           
and known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and      
even destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers        
of the conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or         
(3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulers                  
conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and      
that the appearance of several authorities, their struggles and             
their falls, result solely from the greater or lesser fulfillment by        
the rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the people      
is transferred from some people to others.                                  
                                                     {EP2|CH4 ^paragraph 15}
  And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain           
the relation of the people to their rulers.                                 
  Some historians- those biographical and specialist historians             
already referred to- in their simplicity failing to understand the          
question of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective      
will of the people is unconditionally transferred to historical             
persons, and therefore when describing some single state they assume        
that particular power to be the one absolute and real power, and            
that any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation of        
power- mere violence.                                                       
  Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of              
history, has the inconvenience- in application to complex and stormy        
periods in the life of nations during which various powers arise            
simultaneously and struggle with one another- that a Legitimist             
historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory,           
and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a               
Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention        
and the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all the          
others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations                 
furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can only         
satisfy young children.                                                     
  Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of           
historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the          
will of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have        
power only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will          
of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this      
program consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they         
continually contradict one another.                                         
  Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's      
progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth,              
freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country.      
But not to mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature          
of this program- or even admitting that some one general program of         
these conditions exists- the facts of history almost always contradict      
that theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted               
consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how        
is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns                 
tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by their             
people? To this question historians reply that Louis XIV's activity,        
contrary to the program, reacted on Louis XVI. But why did it not           
react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV- why should it react just on Louis        
XVI? And what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questions      
there are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view explain      
why for several centuries the collective will is not withdrawn from         
certain rulers and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period of        
fifty years is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, to          
Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to               
Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and to            
Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people's         
will from from one individual to another, especially in view of             
international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians           
are obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal            
delegations of the people's will but are accidents dependent on             
cunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a      
ruler, or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events of         
history- civil wars, revolutions, and conquests- are presented by           
these historians not as the results of free transferences of the            
people's will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one or            
more individuals, that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so      
these historians also see and admit historical events which are             
exceptions to the theory.                                                   
                                                     {EP2|CH4 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                                                 
                                                     {EP2|CH4 ^paragraph 25}
  Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most          
obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all            
conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of      
humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by              
almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment,            
progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization        
as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study the           
men of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained: kings,          
ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to         
the extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted or         
hindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved that the           
aim of humanity does consist in freedom, equality, enlightenment, or        
civilization, and as the connection of the people with the rulers           
and enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumption      
that the collective will of the people is always transferred to the         
men whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity of the millions      
who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture, and destroy one another      
never is expressed in the account of the activity of some dozen people      
who did not burn houses, practice agriculture, or slay their fellow         
creatures.                                                                  
  History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples          
of the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive            
eastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their         
mistresses and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau,           
Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others?                                          
  Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and               
Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the            
Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?                            
  Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained      
by the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their         
ladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without      
leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit,               
remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the              
cessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim for the           
Crusade- the deliverance of Jerusalem- had been clearly defined by          
historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to          
free the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown cause        
which had previously impelled them to go no longer existed. The             
history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers can evidently not cover        
the life of the peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and the            
Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers,         
but the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses has           
remained unknown.                                                           
  Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us        
the life of the peoples.                                                    
                                                     {EP2|CH4 ^paragraph 30}
  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.                                     
                                                                            
EP2|CH5                                                                     
  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.                                                          
                                                      {EP2|CH5 ^paragraph 5}
  "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.                                              
                                                     {EP2|CH5 ^paragraph 10}
-                                                                           
  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.             
                                                     {EP2|CH5 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                              
                                                                            
EP2|CH6                                                                     
  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.                                        
                                                      {EP2|CH6 ^paragraph 5}
  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                                               
                                                     {EP2|CH6 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                 
                                                     {EP2|CH6 ^paragraph 15}
  A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone,        
of which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and        
file; the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of           
the next higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point        
of which will represent the commander in chief.                             
  The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section          
of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing,            
hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for             
these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The      
noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the              
action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give      
commands. An officer still less often acts directly himself, but            
commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but command the      
troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon              
himself. The commander in chief never takes direct part in the              
action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement        
of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of people to one another      
is seen in every combination of men for common activity- in                 
agriculture, trade, and every administration.                               
  And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of      
a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in           
any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to           
the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action,          
combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in        
performing the action the less they can command and the more                
numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the         
action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there            
are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top,        
who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his              
activity chiefly to commanding.                                             
  This relation of the men who command to those they command is what        
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.                     
  Having restored the condition of time under which all events              
occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related to a         
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of        
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that      
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest          
part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively            
directed to commanding.                                                     
                                                                            
EP2|CH7                                                                     
  CHAPTER VII                                                               
-                                                                           
  When an event is taking place people express their opinions and           
wishes about it, and as the event results from the collective activity      
of many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure        
to be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions              
expressed is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event          
as a command preceding it.                                                  
  Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to           
how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens            
that this is done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have         
command and power in their primary form. The man who worked most            
with his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, or          
reflect on or command what would result from the common activity;           
while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with his         
hands on account of his greater verbal activity.                            
  When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a              
common aim there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their      
activity is given to directing and commanding, take less less part          
in the direct work.                                                         
  When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections         
which as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his            
present activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just        
the same is done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not        
take a direct part in the activity to devise considerations,                
justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity.          
  For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and          
kill one another. And corresponding to the event its justification          
appears in people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare          
of France, for liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one         
another, and this event was accompanied by its justification in the         
necessity for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and          
so on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men,         
and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France,         
the baseness of England, and so on. History shows us that these             
justifications of the events have no common sense and are all               
contradictory, as in the case of killing a man as the result of             
recognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for           
the humiliation of England. But these justifications have a very            
necessary significance in their own day.                                    
                                                      {EP2|CH7 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                        
                                                     {EP2|CH7 ^paragraph 10}
  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.          
                                                     {EP2|CH7 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                         
                                                     {EP2|CH7 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                                               
                                                                            
EP2|CH8                                                                     
  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.                                                                   
                                                      {EP2|CH8 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                                                      
                                                     {EP2|CH8 ^paragraph 10}
  To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of           
all be conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of           
himself as a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is            
conscious of his volition. But his will- which forms the essence of         
his life- man recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.                   
  If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed          
by one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking        
food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this           
never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation          
of it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to      
him to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as          
free.                                                                       
  You say: I am not and am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let      
it fall. Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an               
irrefutable demonstration of freedom.                                       
  That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not               
subject to reason.                                                          
  If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and                   
independent source of self-consciousness it would be subject to             
reasoning and to experience, but in fact such subjection does not           
exist and is inconceivable.                                                 
                                                     {EP2|CH8 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                                                                       
                                                     {EP2|CH8 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                                              
                                                     {EP2|CH8 ^paragraph 25}
  Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears               
subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from      
that connection appears to free. How should the past life of nations        
and of humanity be regarded- as the result of the free, or as the           
result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for          
history.                                                                    
  Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of knowledge-        
thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of          
printed matter- has the question of the freedom of will been put on         
a level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the          
majority of so-called advanced people- that is, the crowd of                
ignoramuses- have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with           
one side of the question for a solution of the whole problem.               
  They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist,      
for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular         
movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul           
and free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we          
sprang from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that             
thousands of years ago that same law of necessity which with such           
ardor they are now trying to prove by physiology and comparative            
zoology was not merely acknowledged by all the religions and all the        
thinkers, but has never been denied. They do not see that the role          
of the natural sciences in this matter is merely to serve as an             
instrument for the illumination of one side of it. For the fact             
that, from the point of view of observation, reason and the will are        
merely secretions of the brain, and that man following the general law      
may have developed from lower animals at some unknown period of             
time, only explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands          
of years ago by all the religious and philosophic theories- that            
from the point of view of reason man is subject to the law of               
necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's breadth the solution of      
the question, which has another, opposite, side, based on the               
consciousness of freedom.                                                   
  If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is      
as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at         
a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is         
the time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of         
how man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of      
necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative            
physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can          
observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe           
consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.                 
  The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this         
question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls          
of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief            
superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over        
the windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should      
be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything        
is now so smooth and regular.                                               
                                                                            
EP2|CH9                                                                     
  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.                                                      
                                                      {EP2|CH9 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                     
                                                     {EP2|CH9 ^paragraph 10}
  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.                                                 
                                                     {EP2|CH9 ^paragraph 15}
  (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.                           
                                                     {EP2|CH9 ^paragraph 20}
  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.                                                                     
                                                     {EP2|CH9 ^paragraph 25}
  When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a        
crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we               
ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we        
most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of         
a virtuous act we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case        
we recognize in it more individuality, originality, and                     
independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes of the act          
is known to us we recognize a certain element of necessity and are          
less insistent on punishment for the crime, or the acknowledgment of        
the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom of the apparently             
original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors              
mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or          
mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more         
comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems          
less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The            
founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when          
we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity. If we         
have a large range of examples, if our observation is constantly            
directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in people's         
actions, their actions appear to us more under compulsion and less          
free the more correctly we connect the effects with the causes. If          
we examined simple actions and had a vast number of such actions under      
observation, our conception of their inevitability would be still           
greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the        
misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard's         
relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less        
free the better we understand their cause. If the man whose actions we      
are considering is on a very low stage of mental development, like a        
child, a madman, or a simpleton- then, knowing the causes of the act        
and the simplicity of the character and intelligence in question, we        
see so large an element of necessity and so little free will that as        
soon as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell the          
result.                                                                     
  On these three considerations alone is based the conception of            
irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted      
by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less        
according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in        
which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according        
to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of         
the action and its investigation, and according to the greater or           
lesser understanding of the causes that led to the action.                  
                                                                            
EP2|CH10                                                                    
  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.                                                                 
                                                     {EP2|CH10 ^paragraph 5}
  (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.                                                  
                                                    {EP2|CH10 ^paragraph 10}
  (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.                 
                                                    {EP2|CH10 ^paragraph 15}
  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.                   
                                                    {EP2|CH10 ^paragraph 20}
  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.         
                                                    {EP2|CH10 ^paragraph 25}
  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.                                                             
                                                    {EP2|CH10 ^paragraph 30}
  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.                                               
                                                                            
EP2|CH11                                                                    
  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.                                       
                                                     {EP2|CH11 ^paragraph 5}
  From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards         
its subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events        
in man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is                
impossible, for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon          
as we recognize it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law      
becomes impossible.                                                         
  Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal,          
that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we            
convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes,           
and then instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of      
laws as its problem.                                                        
  The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of      
thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously        
with the self-destruction toward which- ever dissecting and dissecting      
the causes of phenomena- the old method of history is moving.               
  All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at             
infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons           
the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the                
integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the        
conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property           
common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements.                          
  In another form but along the same path of reflection the other           
sciences have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity          
he did not say that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction;      
he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have the           
property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the              
question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed           
the property common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the          
infinitely small. The same is done by the natural sciences: leaving         
aside the question of cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the      
same path. And if history has for its object the study of the movement      
of the nations and of humanity and not the narration of episodes in         
the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside the conception of           
cause, should seek the laws common to all the inseparably                   
interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.                         
                                                                            
EP2|CH12                                                                    
  CHAPTER XII                                                               
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  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.                                                      
                                                     {EP2|CH12 ^paragraph 5}
  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.                  
                                                    {EP2|CH12 ^paragraph 10}
  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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                               -THE END-                                    
                                                                            
                                                                            

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