From a1ab0b0a833e15118dafbc59a4086f106f49abd3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: root <stao042906@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2024 13:50:07 -0800
Subject: [PATCH 1/3] 1. Adding a flag to track whether any process was
 parallelized 2. Track execution time for each process 3. Modify
 Schedule.run() to generate feedback messages based on the flag and execution
 time status.

---
 compiler/pash_compilation_server.py | 14 ++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+)

diff --git a/compiler/pash_compilation_server.py b/compiler/pash_compilation_server.py
index 9d7f6ad0a..a10830bad 100644
--- a/compiler/pash_compilation_server.py
+++ b/compiler/pash_compilation_server.py
@@ -121,6 +121,7 @@ def __init__(self):
 
         ## A map that keeps mappings between proc_id and (input_ir, width, exec_time)
         self.process_id_input_ir_map = {}
+        self.parallelized_flag = False
         ## This is a map from input IRs, i.e., locations in the code, to a list of process_ids
         self.input_ir_to_process_id_map = {}
 
@@ -354,6 +355,7 @@ def compile_and_add(self, compiled_script_file, var_file, input_ir_file):
         else:
             self.running_procs += 1
 
+
         ## Get the time before we start executing (roughly) to determine how much time this command execution will take
         command_exec_start_time = datetime.now()
         self.process_id_input_ir_map[process_id].set_start_exec_time(
@@ -420,6 +422,8 @@ def handle_exit(self, input_cmd):
         exec_time = (command_finish_exec_time - command_start_exec_time) / timedelta(
             milliseconds=1
         )
+        command_start_exec_time = self.process_id_input_ir_map[process_id].get_start_exec_time()
+        exec_time = (command_finish_exec_time - command_start_exec_time) / timedelta(milliseconds=1)
         log("Process:", process_id, "exited. Exec time was:", exec_time)
         self.handle_time_measurement(process_id, exec_time)
         self.remove_process(process_id)
@@ -509,6 +513,16 @@ def run(self):
             self.parse_and_run_cmd(input_cmd)
 
         self.connection_manager.close()
+        if not self.parallelized_flag:
+            log("No parts of the input script were parallelized. Ensure commands are annotated for parallelization.")
+        elif all(
+            proc_info.exec_time is not None and proc_info.exec_time < 1
+            for proc_info in self.process_id_input_ir_map.values()
+        ):
+            log("Some script fragments were parallelized, but their execution times were negligible.")
+            log("Consider optimizing your script to include longer-running tasks.")
+        else:
+            log("Parallelization completed successfully.")
         shutdown()
 
 

From 62864a4c2bbf149219db51fb740dc10904e77fec Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: root <stao042906@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2024 11:01:53 -0800
Subject: [PATCH 2/3] Added 1M.txt and spell.outtime file and rebased to future
 branch

---
 evaluation/intro/input/1M.txt  | 21560 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 evaluation/intro/spell.outtime |     0
 2 files changed, 21560 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 evaluation/intro/input/1M.txt
 create mode 100644 evaluation/intro/spell.outtime

diff --git a/evaluation/intro/input/1M.txt b/evaluation/intro/input/1M.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..bd1deb693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/evaluation/intro/input/1M.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21560 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: War and Peace
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+Translators: Louise and Aylmer Maude
+
+Release Date: April, 2001 [eBook #2600]
+[Most recently updated: June 14, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAR AND PEACE ***
+
+
+
+
+WAR AND PEACE
+
+
+By Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi
+
+
+    Contents
+
+    BOOK ONE: 1805
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+    CHAPTER XXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIV
+
+    CHAPTER XXV
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI
+
+    CHAPTER XXVII
+
+    CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+    BOOK TWO: 1805
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+    CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+    BOOK THREE: 1805
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+    BOOK FOUR: 1806
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+    BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+    CHAPTER XXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+    BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+    CHAPTER XXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIV
+
+    CHAPTER XXV
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+    BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+    BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+    CHAPTER XXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+    BOOK NINE: 1812
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+    CHAPTER XXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+    BOOK TEN: 1812
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+    CHAPTER XXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIV
+
+    CHAPTER XXV
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI
+
+    CHAPTER XXVII
+
+    CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIX
+
+    CHAPTER XXX
+
+    CHAPTER XXXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXXII
+
+    CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+    CHAPTER XXXV
+
+    CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+    CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+    CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+    BOOK ELEVEN: 1812
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+    CHAPTER XXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIV
+
+    CHAPTER XXV
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI
+
+    CHAPTER XXVII
+
+    CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXIX
+
+    CHAPTER XXX
+
+    CHAPTER XXXI
+
+    CHAPTER XXXII
+
+    CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+    CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+    BOOK TWELVE: 1812
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+    BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+    BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+    BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+    CHAPTER XVII
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIX
+
+    CHAPTER XX
+
+
+    FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+    CHAPTER XIII
+
+    CHAPTER XIV
+
+    CHAPTER XV
+
+    CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+    SECOND EPILOGUE
+
+    CHAPTER I
+
+    CHAPTER II
+
+    CHAPTER III
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+
+    CHAPTER V
+
+    CHAPTER VI
+
+    CHAPTER VII
+
+    CHAPTER VIII
+
+    CHAPTER IX
+
+    CHAPTER X
+
+    CHAPTER XI
+
+    CHAPTER XII
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE: 1805
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
+Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war,
+if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that
+Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing
+more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my
+‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I
+have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.”
+
+It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pávlovna
+Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna.
+With these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of high
+rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna
+Pávlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering
+from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used
+only by the elite.
+
+All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered
+by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:
+
+“If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the
+prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible,
+I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10—Annette
+Schérer.”
+
+“Heavens! what a virulent attack!” replied the prince, not in the
+least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an
+embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on
+his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that
+refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and
+with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance
+who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pávlovna,
+kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head,
+and complacently seated himself on the sofa.
+
+“First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend’s
+mind at rest,” said he without altering his tone, beneath the
+politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony
+could be discerned.
+
+“Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
+like these if one has any feeling?” said Anna Pávlovna. “You are
+staying the whole evening, I hope?”
+
+“And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday. I
+must put in an appearance there,” said the prince. “My daughter is
+coming for me to take me there.”
+
+“I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess all these
+festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.”
+
+“If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have
+been put off,” said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force
+of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.
+
+“Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosíltsev’s
+dispatch? You know everything.”
+
+“What can one say about it?” replied the prince in a cold, listless
+tone. “What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has
+burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours.”
+
+Prince Vasíli always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale
+part. Anna Pávlovna Schérer on the contrary, despite her forty years,
+overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had
+become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not
+feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the
+expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it
+did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips expressed,
+as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect,
+which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to
+correct.
+
+In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pávlovna burst
+out:
+
+“Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t understand
+things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She
+is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign
+recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one
+thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform
+the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will
+not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of
+revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of
+this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just
+one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial
+spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander’s
+loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to
+find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer
+did Novosíltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot
+understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for
+himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what have they
+promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not
+perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and
+that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don’t believe a
+word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian
+neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty
+destiny of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!”
+
+She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
+
+“I think,” said the prince with a smile, “that if you had been
+sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King
+of Prussia’s consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me
+a cup of tea?”
+
+“In a moment. À propos,” she added, becoming calm again, “I am
+expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who
+is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best
+French families. He is one of the genuine émigrés, the good ones. And
+also the Abbé Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been
+received by the Emperor. Had you heard?”
+
+“I shall be delighted to meet them,” said the prince. “But
+tell me,” he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just
+occurred to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief
+motive of his visit, “is it true that the Dowager Empress wants
+Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all
+accounts is a poor creature.”
+
+Prince Vasíli wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were
+trying through the Dowager Empress Márya Fëdorovna to secure it for
+the baron.
+
+Anna Pávlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor
+anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was
+pleased with.
+
+“Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
+sister,” was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
+
+As she named the Empress, Anna Pávlovna’s face suddenly assumed an
+expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
+sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
+patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke
+beaucoup d’estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.
+
+The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and
+courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pávlovna
+wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak as he had done of a man
+recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she
+said:
+
+“Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
+out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
+beautiful.”
+
+The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
+
+“I often think,” she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
+to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political
+and social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate
+conversation—“I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life
+are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children?
+I don’t speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don’t like him,” she
+added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows.
+“Two such charming children. And really you appreciate them less than
+anyone, and so you don’t deserve to have them.”
+
+And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
+
+“I can’t help it,” said the prince. “Lavater would have said I
+lack the bump of paternity.”
+
+“Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know
+I am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves” (and her
+face assumed its melancholy expression), “he was mentioned at Her
+Majesty’s and you were pitied....”
+
+The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
+awaiting a reply. He frowned.
+
+“What would you have me do?” he said at last. “You know I did all
+a father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools.
+Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That
+is the only difference between them.” He said this smiling in a way
+more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round
+his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and
+unpleasant.
+
+“And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
+father there would be nothing I could reproach you with,” said Anna
+Pávlovna, looking up pensively.
+
+“I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
+children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
+is how I explain it to myself. It can’t be helped!”
+
+He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
+gesture. Anna Pávlovna meditated.
+
+“Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?” she
+asked. “They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I
+don’t feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little person who
+is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess
+Mary Bolkónskaya.”
+
+Prince Vasíli did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and
+perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of
+the head that he was considering this information.
+
+“Do you know,” he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
+current of his thoughts, “that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
+rubles a year? And,” he went on after a pause, “what will it be in
+five years, if he goes on like this?” Presently he added: “That’s
+what we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours
+rich?”
+
+“Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is
+the well-known Prince Bolkónski who had to retire from the army under
+the late Emperor, and was nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ He is
+very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy.
+She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately.
+He is an aide-de-camp of Kutúzov’s and will be here tonight.”
+
+“Listen, dear Annette,” said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
+Pávlovna’s hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. “Arrange
+that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-slafe
+with an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich
+and of good family and that’s all I want.”
+
+And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the
+maid of honor’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro
+as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.
+
+“Attendez,” said Anna Pávlovna, reflecting, “I’ll speak to
+Lise, young Bolkónski’s wife, this very evening, and perhaps the
+thing can be arranged. It shall be on your family’s behalf that I’ll
+start my apprenticeship as old maid.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
+Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
+and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
+Prince Vasíli’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, came to take her
+father to the ambassador’s entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
+her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkónskaya,
+known as la femme la plus séduisante de Pétersbourg, * was also there.
+She had been married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did
+not go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince
+Vasíli’s son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced.
+The Abbé Morio and many others had also come.
+
+     * The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
+
+To each new arrival Anna Pávlovna said, “You have not yet seen my
+aunt,” or “You do not know my aunt?” and very gravely conducted
+him or her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her
+cap, who had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests
+began to arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her
+aunt, Anna Pávlovna mentioned each one’s name and then left them.
+
+Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not
+one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them
+cared about; Anna Pávlovna observed these greetings with mournful and
+solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in
+the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her
+Majesty, “who, thank God, was better today.” And each visitor,
+though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman
+with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not
+return to her the whole evening.
+
+The young Princess Bolkónskaya had brought some work in a
+gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
+delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth,
+but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming when she
+occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the case
+with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect—the shortness of her
+upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to be her own special and
+peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this pretty
+young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and health, and
+carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young ones
+who looked at her, after being in her company and talking to her a
+little while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life
+and health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile
+and the constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that they were in a
+specially amiable mood that day.
+
+The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying
+steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat
+down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a
+pleasure to herself and to all around her. “I have brought my work,”
+said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present.
+“Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me,”
+she added, turning to her hostess. “You wrote that it was to be quite
+a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed.” And she
+spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray
+dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
+
+“Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
+else,” replied Anna Pávlovna.
+
+“You know,” said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
+French, turning to a general, “my husband is deserting me? He is going
+to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?” she
+added, addressing Prince Vasíli, and without waiting for an answer she
+turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Hélène.
+
+“What a delightful woman this little princess is!” said Prince
+Vasíli to Anna Pávlovna.
+
+One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
+close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
+at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
+young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezúkhov, a well-known
+grandee of Catherine’s time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
+had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only
+just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his
+first appearance in society. Anna Pávlovna greeted him with the nod she
+accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite of
+this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight
+of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face
+when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than
+the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to
+the clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression which
+distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.
+
+“It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
+invalid,” said Anna Pávlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
+aunt as she conducted him to her.
+
+Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as
+if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little
+princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.
+
+Anna Pávlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
+aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty’s health.
+Anna Pávlovna in dismay detained him with the words: “Do you know the
+Abbé Morio? He is a most interesting man.”
+
+“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
+interesting but hardly feasible.”
+
+“You think so?” rejoined Anna Pávlovna in order to say something
+and get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
+committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before
+she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to
+another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet
+spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbé’s
+plan chimerical.
+
+“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pávlovna with a smile.
+
+And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she
+resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready
+to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As
+the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes
+round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that
+creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check the
+machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pávlovna moved about her
+drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a
+word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational machine in steady,
+proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety about
+Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he approached
+the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said there, and
+again when he passed to another group whose center was the abbé.
+
+Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
+Pávlovna’s was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
+the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like a
+child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing
+any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident
+and refined expression on the faces of those present he was always
+expecting to hear something very profound. At last he came up to Morio.
+Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an
+opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Anna Pávlovna’s reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
+steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
+beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
+was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company had
+settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed round
+the abbé. Another, of young people, was grouped round the beautiful
+Princess Hélène, Prince Vasíli’s daughter, and the little Princess
+Bolkónskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age.
+The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna Pávlovna.
+
+The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished
+manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of
+politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
+which he found himself. Anna Pávlovna was obviously serving him up as
+a treat to her guests. As a clever maître d’hôtel serves up as a
+specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in
+the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pávlovna served up to
+her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbé, as peculiarly choice
+morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the
+murder of the Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d’Enghien
+had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular
+reasons for Buonaparte’s hatred of him.
+
+“Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte,” said Anna Pávlovna,
+with a pleasant feeling that there was something à la Louis XV in the
+sound of that sentence: “Contez nous çela, Vicomte.”
+
+The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness to
+comply. Anna Pávlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone to
+listen to his tale.
+
+“The vicomte knew the duc personally,” whispered Anna Pávlovna to
+one of the guests. “The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur,” said she
+to another. “How evidently he belongs to the best society,” said she
+to a third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
+and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
+on a hot dish.
+
+The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.
+
+“Come over here, Hélène, dear,” said Anna Pávlovna to the
+beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
+another group.
+
+The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with which
+she had first entered the room—the smile of a perfectly beautiful
+woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss
+and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling
+diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her, not looking
+at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously allowing each the
+privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and shapely shoulders,
+back, and bosom—which in the fashion of those days were very much
+exposed—and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as
+she moved toward Anna Pávlovna. Hélène was so lovely that not only
+did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even
+appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She
+seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish its effect.
+
+“How lovely!” said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted his
+shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something extraordinary
+when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also with her
+unchanging smile.
+
+“Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience,” said he,
+smilingly inclining his head.
+
+The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and considered
+a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the story was
+being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful round arm,
+altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her still more
+beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond necklace. From time
+to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and whenever the story
+produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pávlovna, at once adopted just
+the expression she saw on the maid of honor’s face, and again relapsed
+into her radiant smile.
+
+The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Hélène.
+
+“Wait a moment, I’ll get my work.... Now then, what are you
+thinking of?” she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. “Fetch me my
+workbag.”
+
+There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
+merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in her
+seat.
+
+“Now I am all right,” she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
+took up her work.
+
+Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle and
+moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.
+
+Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary resemblance
+to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that in spite of
+this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features were like his
+sister’s, but while in her case everything was lit up by a joyous,
+self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation, and by the
+wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the contrary
+was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen
+self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, nose, and
+mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, and his arms
+and legs always fell into unnatural positions.
+
+“It’s not going to be a ghost story?” said he, sitting down beside
+the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
+instrument he could not begin to speak.
+
+“Why no, my dear fellow,” said the astonished narrator, shrugging
+his shoulders.
+
+“Because I hate ghost stories,” said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
+which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
+had uttered them.
+
+He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure
+whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was dressed in
+a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of cuisse de nymphe
+effrayée, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.
+
+The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then current,
+to the effect that the Duc d’Enghien had gone secretly to Paris to
+visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon Bonaparte,
+who also enjoyed the famous actress’ favors, and that in his presence
+Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits to which he was
+subject, and was thus at the duc’s mercy. The latter spared him, and
+this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by death.
+
+The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
+where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies looked
+agitated.
+
+“Charming!” said Anna Pávlovna with an inquiring glance at the
+little princess.
+
+“Charming!” whispered the little princess, sticking the needle into
+her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story
+prevented her from going on with it.
+
+The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
+prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pávlovna, who had kept a
+watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he was
+talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbé, so she hurried to the
+rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbé about
+the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by the young
+man’s simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet theory. Both
+were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally, which was why
+Anna Pávlovna disapproved.
+
+“The means are ... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
+the people,” the abbé was saying. “It is only necessary for one
+powerful nation like Russia—barbaric as she is said to be—to place
+herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object
+the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the
+world!”
+
+“But how are you to get that balance?” Pierre was beginning.
+
+At that moment Anna Pávlovna came up and, looking severely at Pierre,
+asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The Italian’s
+face instantly changed and assumed an offensively affected, sugary
+expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing with women.
+
+“I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
+society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have had
+the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think of
+the climate,” said he.
+
+Not letting the abbé and Pierre escape, Anna Pávlovna, the more
+conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
+larger circle.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
+Bolkónski, the little princess’ husband. He was a very handsome young
+man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about
+him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step,
+offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was
+evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had
+found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to
+them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed
+to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from
+her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna
+Pávlovna’s hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.
+
+“You are off to the war, Prince?” said Anna Pávlovna.
+
+“General Kutúzov,” said Bolkónski, speaking French and stressing
+the last syllable of the general’s name like a Frenchman, “has been
+pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp....”
+
+“And Lise, your wife?”
+
+“She will go to the country.”
+
+“Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?”
+
+“André,” said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
+coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, “the vicomte has
+been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!”
+
+Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who from
+the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with glad,
+affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he looked round
+Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance with whoever was
+touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre’s beaming face he gave him an
+unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.
+
+“There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?” said he to
+Pierre.
+
+“I knew you would be here,” replied Pierre. “I will come to supper
+with you. May I?” he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
+vicomte who was continuing his story.
+
+“No, impossible!” said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing
+Pierre’s hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He
+wished to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasíli and his
+daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.
+
+“You must excuse me, dear Vicomte,” said Prince Vasíli to the
+Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
+his rising. “This unfortunate fete at the ambassador’s deprives me
+of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave
+your enchanting party,” said he, turning to Anna Pávlovna.
+
+His daughter, Princess Hélène, passed between the chairs, lightly
+holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
+radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
+almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.
+
+“Very lovely,” said Prince Andrew.
+
+“Very,” said Pierre.
+
+In passing Prince Vasíli seized Pierre’s hand and said to Anna
+Pávlovna: “Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me
+a whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
+Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
+women.”
+
+
+Anna Pávlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew his
+father to be a connection of Prince Vasíli’s. The elderly lady who
+had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Prince
+Vasíli in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed
+had left her kindly and tear-worn face and it now expressed only anxiety
+and fear.
+
+“How about my son Borís, Prince?” said she, hurrying after him into
+the anteroom. “I can’t remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me what
+news I may take back to my poor boy.”
+
+Although Prince Vasíli listened reluctantly and not very politely
+to the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
+ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might not go
+away.
+
+“What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
+would be transferred to the Guards at once?” said she.
+
+“Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can,” answered Prince
+Vasíli, “but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I should
+advise you to appeal to Rumyántsev through Prince Golítsyn. That would
+be the best way.”
+
+The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskáya, belonging to one of the
+best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
+society had lost her former influential connections. She had now come to
+Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her only son.
+It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasíli that she had obtained an
+invitation to Anna Pávlovna’s reception and had sat listening to
+the vicomte’s story. Prince Vasíli’s words frightened her, an
+embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment;
+then she smiled again and clutched Prince Vasíli’s arm more tightly.
+
+“Listen to me, Prince,” said she. “I have never yet asked you
+for anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
+father’s friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God’s sake to
+do this for my son—and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,”
+she added hurriedly. “No, don’t be angry, but promise! I have asked
+Golítsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always were,”
+she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.
+
+“Papa, we shall be late,” said Princess Hélène, turning her
+beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
+stood waiting by the door.
+
+Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized
+if it is to last. Prince Vasíli knew this, and having once realized
+that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him, he would soon be
+unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using his influence. But
+in Princess Drubetskáya’s case he felt, after her second appeal,
+something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded him of what was
+quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the first steps in
+his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners that she was one of
+those women—mostly mothers—who, having once made up their minds,
+will not rest until they have gained their end, and are prepared if
+necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour after hour, and even
+to make scenes. This last consideration moved him.
+
+“My dear Anna Mikháylovna,” said he with his usual familiarity and
+weariness of tone, “it is almost impossible for me to do what you
+ask; but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father’s
+memory, I will do the impossible—your son shall be transferred to the
+Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?”
+
+“My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you—I knew your
+kindness!” He turned to go.
+
+“Wait—just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards...”
+she faltered. “You are on good terms with Michael Ilariónovich
+Kutúzov ... recommend Borís to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
+rest, and then...”
+
+Prince Vasíli smiled.
+
+“No, I won’t promise that. You don’t know how Kutúzov is pestered
+since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
+all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
+adjutants.”
+
+“No, but do promise! I won’t let you go! My dear benefactor...”
+
+“Papa,” said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
+“we shall be late.”
+
+“Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?”
+
+“Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?”
+
+“Certainly; but about Kutúzov, I don’t promise.”
+
+“Do promise, do promise, Vasíli!” cried Anna Mikháylovna as he
+went, with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably
+came naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.
+
+Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed
+all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone her face
+resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She returned to the
+group where the vicomte was still talking, and again pretended to
+listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her task was
+accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+“And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
+Milan?” asked Anna Pávlovna, “and of the comedy of the people of
+Genoa and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
+Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of
+the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one’s head whirl! It is as
+if the whole world had gone crazy.”
+
+Prince Andrew looked Anna Pávlovna straight in the face with a
+sarcastic smile.
+
+“‘Dieu me la donne, gare à qui la touche!’’ * They say he was
+very fine when he said that,” he remarked, repeating the words in
+Italian: “‘Dio mi l’ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!’’
+
+     * God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!
+
+“I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
+over,” Anna Pávlovna continued. “The sovereigns will not be able to
+endure this man who is a menace to everything.”
+
+“The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia,” said the vicomte, polite
+but hopeless: “The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
+XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!” and he became
+more animated. “And believe me, they are reaping the reward of their
+betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they are sending
+ambassadors to compliment the usurper.”
+
+And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.
+
+Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
+through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
+little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Condé
+coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much gravity
+as if she had asked him to do it.
+
+“Bâton de gueules, engrêlé de gueules d’azur—maison Condé,”
+said he.
+
+The princess listened, smiling.
+
+“If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer,” the
+vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
+he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others but
+follows the current of his own thoughts, “things will have gone too
+far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French society—I
+mean good French society—will have been forever destroyed, and
+then....”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
+make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pávlovna,
+who had him under observation, interrupted:
+
+“The Emperor Alexander,” said she, with the melancholy which
+always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, “has
+declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to choose
+their own form of government; and I believe that once free from the
+usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the arms
+of its rightful king,” she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
+royalist emigrant.
+
+“That is doubtful,” said Prince Andrew. “Monsieur le Vicomte quite
+rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it will
+be difficult to return to the old regime.”
+
+“From what I have heard,” said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
+the conversation, “almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
+Bonaparte’s side.”
+
+“It is the Buonapartists who say that,” replied the vicomte without
+looking at Pierre. “At the present time it is difficult to know the
+real state of French public opinion.”
+
+“Bonaparte has said so,” remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
+smile.
+
+It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
+remarks at him, though without looking at him.
+
+“‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow
+it,’” Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
+Napoleon’s words. “‘I opened my antechambers and they crowded
+in.’ I do not know how far he was justified in saying so.”
+
+“Not in the least,” replied the vicomte. “After the murder of the
+duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
+people,” he went on, turning to Anna Pávlovna, “he ever was a hero,
+after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one
+hero less on earth.”
+
+Before Anna Pávlovna and the others had time to smile their
+appreciation of the vicomte’s epigram, Pierre again broke into the
+conversation, and though Anna Pávlovna felt sure he would say something
+inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.
+
+“The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,” declared Monsieur Pierre,
+“was a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon
+showed greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
+responsibility of that deed.”
+
+“Dieu! Mon Dieu!” muttered Anna Pávlovna in a terrified whisper.
+
+“What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
+greatness of soul?” said the little princess, smiling and drawing her
+work nearer to her.
+
+“Oh! Oh!” exclaimed several voices.
+
+“Capital!” said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping his
+knee with the palm of his hand.
+
+The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at his
+audience over his spectacles and continued.
+
+“I say so,” he continued desperately, “because the Bourbons fled
+from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon alone
+understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general good,
+he could not stop short for the sake of one man’s life.”
+
+“Won’t you come over to the other table?” suggested Anna
+Pávlovna.
+
+But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.
+
+“No,” cried he, becoming more and more eager, “Napoleon is great
+because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
+preserved all that was good in it—equality of citizenship and freedom
+of speech and of the press—and only for that reason did he obtain
+power.”
+
+“Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
+commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
+called him a great man,” remarked the vicomte.
+
+“He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he might
+rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great
+man. The Revolution was a grand thing!” continued Monsieur Pierre,
+betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme
+youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.
+
+“What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
+But won’t you come to this other table?” repeated Anna Pávlovna.
+
+“Rousseau’s Contrat Social,” said the vicomte with a tolerant
+smile.
+
+“I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas.”
+
+“Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide,” again interjected an
+ironical voice.
+
+“Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
+important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from
+prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon
+has retained in full force.”
+
+“Liberty and equality,” said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
+last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
+were, “high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does
+not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and
+equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the
+contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it.”
+
+Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
+vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of
+Pierre’s outburst Anna Pávlovna, despite her social experience, was
+horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre’s sacrilegious words
+had not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
+impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in
+a vigorous attack on the orator.
+
+“But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” said she, “how do you explain the
+fact of a great man executing a duc—or even an ordinary man who—is
+innocent and untried?”
+
+“I should like,” said the vicomte, “to ask how monsieur explains
+the 18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not
+at all like the conduct of a great man!”
+
+“And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!” said the
+little princess, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+“He’s a low fellow, say what you will,” remarked Prince Hippolyte.
+
+Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His
+smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
+his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
+another—a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to
+ask forgiveness.
+
+The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly that
+this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were
+silent.
+
+“How do you expect him to answer you all at once?” said Prince
+Andrew. “Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
+between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
+So it seems to me.”
+
+“Yes, yes, of course!” Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
+this reinforcement.
+
+“One must admit,” continued Prince Andrew, “that Napoleon as a man
+was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he
+gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but ... but there are other acts
+which it is difficult to justify.”
+
+Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of
+Pierre’s remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time to
+go.
+
+Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to attend,
+and asking them all to be seated began:
+
+“I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it.
+Excuse me, Vicomte—I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
+lost....” And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
+as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
+Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
+attention to his story.
+
+“There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She must
+have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her
+taste. And she had a lady’s maid, also big. She said....”
+
+Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
+difficulty.
+
+“She said.... Oh yes! She said, ‘Girl,’ to the maid, ‘put on a
+livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
+calls.’”
+
+Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his
+audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several
+persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pávlovna, did however
+smile.
+
+“She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and
+her long hair came down....” Here he could contain himself no
+longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: “And the whole world
+knew....”
+
+And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told
+it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pávlovna and the
+others appreciated Prince Hippolyte’s social tact in so agreeably
+ending Pierre’s unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the anecdote
+the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last
+and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, and when and
+where.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Having thanked Anna Pávlovna for her charming soiree, the guests began
+to take their leave.
+
+Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with huge
+red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a drawing
+room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say something
+particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he was
+absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his own, the
+general’s three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the plume,
+till the general asked him to restore it. All his absent-mindedness and
+inability to enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by
+his kindly, simple, and modest expression. Anna Pávlovna turned toward
+him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his
+indiscretion, nodded and said: “I hope to see you again, but I also
+hope you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.”
+
+When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again everybody
+saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, “Opinions are
+opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am.” And
+everyone, including Anna Pávlovna, felt this.
+
+Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders
+to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
+indifferently to his wife’s chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
+come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant
+princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.
+
+“Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold,” said the little princess,
+taking leave of Anna Pávlovna. “It is settled,” she added in a low
+voice.
+
+Anna Pávlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match she
+contemplated between Anatole and the little princess’ sister-in-law.
+
+“I rely on you, my dear,” said Anna Pávlovna, also in a low tone.
+“Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au
+revoir! ”—and she left the hall.
+
+Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his face
+close to her, began to whisper something.
+
+Two footmen, the princess’ and his own, stood holding a shawl and
+a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to
+the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of
+understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as usual
+spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.
+
+“I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s,” said Prince
+Hippolyte “—so dull—. It has been a delightful evening, has it
+not? Delightful!”
+
+“They say the ball will be very good,” replied the princess, drawing
+up her downy little lip. “All the pretty women in society will be
+there.”
+
+“Not all, for you will not be there; not all,” said Prince Hippolyte
+smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he
+even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either from
+awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after the
+shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long time, as
+though embracing her.
+
+Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at her
+husband. Prince Andrew’s eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did he
+seem.
+
+“Are you ready?” he asked his wife, looking past her.
+
+Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest fashion
+reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out into the porch
+following the princess, whom a footman was helping into the carriage.
+
+“Princesse, au revoir,” cried he, stumbling with his tongue as well
+as with his feet.
+
+The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the dark
+carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince Hippolyte, under
+pretense of helping, was in everyone’s way.
+
+“Allow me, sir,” said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold,
+disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.
+
+“I am expecting you, Pierre,” said the same voice, but gently and
+affectionately.
+
+The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte
+laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte
+whom he had promised to take home.
+
+“Well, mon cher,” said the vicomte, having seated himself beside
+Hippolyte in the carriage, “your little princess is very nice, very
+nice indeed, quite French,” and he kissed the tips of his fingers.
+Hippolyte burst out laughing.
+
+“Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,”
+continued the vicomte. “I pity the poor husband, that little officer
+who gives himself the airs of a monarch.”
+
+Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, “And you were
+saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to
+know how to deal with them.”
+
+Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew’s study like
+one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, took
+from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar’s
+Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.
+
+“What have you done to Mlle Schérer? She will be quite ill now,”
+said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white
+hands.
+
+Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his eager
+face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.
+
+“That abbé is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the
+right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but—I do not
+know how to express it ... not by a balance of political power....”
+
+It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such abstract
+conversation.
+
+“One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have
+you at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
+diplomatist?” asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.
+
+Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.
+
+“Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one or the
+other.”
+
+“But you must decide on something! Your father expects it.”
+
+Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbé as tutor,
+and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow
+his father dismissed the abbé and said to the young man, “Now go
+to Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
+anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasíli, and here is money. Write
+to me all about it, and I will help you in everything.” Pierre had
+already been choosing a career for three months, and had not decided
+on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was speaking.
+Pierre rubbed his forehead.
+
+“But he must be a Freemason,” said he, referring to the abbé whom
+he had met that evening.
+
+“That is all nonsense.” Prince Andrew again interrupted him, “let
+us talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?”
+
+“No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted
+to tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
+freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the army;
+but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world is
+not right.”
+
+Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s childish words.
+He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such
+nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any other
+answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naïve question.
+
+“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no
+wars,” he said.
+
+“And that would be splendid,” said Pierre.
+
+Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
+
+“Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about....”
+
+“Well, why are you going to the war?” asked Pierre.
+
+“What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that I am going....” He
+paused. “I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit
+me!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room. Prince
+Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it
+had had in Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from
+the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house
+dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely
+placed a chair for her.
+
+“How is it,” she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly
+and fussily in the easy chair, “how is it Annette never got married?
+How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying
+so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you
+are, Monsieur Pierre!”
+
+“And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he
+wants to go to the war,” replied Pierre, addressing the princess
+with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
+intercourse with young women.
+
+The princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched her to the
+quick.
+
+“Ah, that is just what I tell him!” said she. “I don’t
+understand it; I don’t in the least understand why men can’t live
+without wars. How is it that we women don’t want anything of the kind,
+don’t need it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here
+he is Uncle’s aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so
+well known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the
+Apráksins’ I heard a lady asking, ‘Is that the famous Prince
+Andrew?’ I did indeed.” She laughed. “He is so well received
+everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You know
+the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were speaking of
+how to arrange it. What do you think?”
+
+Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
+conversation, gave no reply.
+
+“When are you starting?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it spoken
+of,” said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which
+she had spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly
+ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.
+“Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations
+must be broken off ... and then you know, André...” (she looked
+significantly at her husband) “I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” she
+whispered, and a shudder ran down her back.
+
+Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone besides
+Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone of
+frigid politeness.
+
+“What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don’t understand,” said he.
+
+“There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim
+of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone
+in the country.”
+
+“With my father and sister, remember,” said Prince Andrew gently.
+
+“Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to
+be afraid.”
+
+Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a
+joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she
+felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the
+gist of the matter lay in that.
+
+“I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,” said Prince
+Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
+
+The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
+
+“No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have....”
+
+“Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrew.
+“You had better go.”
+
+The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered.
+Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.
+
+Pierre looked over his spectacles with naïve surprise, now at him and
+now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
+
+“Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?” exclaimed the little
+princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful
+grimace. “I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed
+so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no
+pity for me. Why is it?”
+
+“Lise!” was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed
+an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself
+regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
+
+“You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave
+like that six months ago?”
+
+“Lise, I beg you to desist,” said Prince Andrew still more
+emphatically.
+
+Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to
+all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the
+sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
+
+“Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because.... I assure you
+I myself have experienced ... and so ... because ... No, excuse me!
+An outsider is out of place here.... No, don’t distress yourself....
+Good-by!”
+
+Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
+
+“No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of
+the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”
+
+“No, he thinks only of himself,” muttered the princess without
+restraining her angry tears.
+
+“Lise!” said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch
+which indicates that patience is exhausted.
+
+Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’ pretty
+face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes
+glanced askance at her husband’s face, and her own assumed the timid,
+deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its
+drooping tail.
+
+“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she muttered, and lifting her dress with one
+hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.
+
+“Good night, Lise,” said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand
+as he would have done to a stranger.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
+continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead
+with his small hand.
+
+“Let us go and have supper,” he said with a sigh, going to the door.
+
+They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room.
+Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and glass bore
+that imprint of newness found in the households of the newly married.
+Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and,
+with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on
+his face, began to talk—as one who has long had something on his mind
+and suddenly determines to speak out.
+
+“Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry
+till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of,
+and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen
+her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable
+mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is
+good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles.
+Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry
+expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every
+step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing
+room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an
+idiot!... But what’s the good?...” and he waved his arm.
+
+Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and
+the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend
+in amazement.
+
+“My wife,” continued Prince Andrew, “is an excellent woman, one
+of those rare women with whom a man’s honor is safe; but, O God, what
+would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to
+whom I mention this, because I like you.”
+
+As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkónski
+who had lolled in Anna Pávlovna’s easy chairs and with half-closed
+eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his
+thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which
+the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant
+light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary
+times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of almost morbid
+irritation.
+
+“You don’t understand why I say this,” he continued, “but it is
+the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career,” said
+he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), “but Bonaparte when
+he worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing
+but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with
+a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you
+have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with
+regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality—these are
+the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war,
+the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for
+nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit,” continued Prince
+Andrew, “and at Anna Pávlovna’s they listen to me. And that stupid
+set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women.... If you only
+knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is
+right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that’s what
+women are when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them
+in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there’s
+nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow; don’t
+marry!” concluded Prince Andrew.
+
+“It seems funny to me,” said Pierre, “that you, you should
+consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have
+everything before you, everything. And you....”
+
+He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he
+thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.
+
+“How can he talk like that?” thought Pierre. He considered his
+friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the
+highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which might
+be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always astonished at
+Prince Andrew’s calm manner of treating everybody, his extraordinary
+memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything, knew everything,
+and had an opinion about everything), but above all at his capacity for
+work and study. And if Pierre was often struck by Andrew’s lack
+of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he himself was
+particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a defect but as a
+sign of strength.
+
+Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise
+and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels
+that they may run smoothly.
+
+“My part is played out,” said Prince Andrew. “What’s the use of
+talking about me? Let us talk about you,” he added after a silence,
+smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
+
+That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre’s face.
+
+“But what is there to say about me?” said Pierre, his face relaxing
+into a careless, merry smile. “What am I? An illegitimate son!”
+He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great
+effort to say this. “Without a name and without means... And it
+really...” But he did not say what “it really” was. “For the
+present I am free and am all right. Only I haven’t the least idea what
+I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously.”
+
+Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance—friendly and
+affectionate as it was—expressed a sense of his own superiority.
+
+“I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among our
+whole set. Yes, you’re all right! Choose what you will; it’s all the
+same. You’ll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up visiting
+those Kurágins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so
+badly—all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!”
+
+“What would you have, my dear fellow?” answered Pierre, shrugging
+his shoulders. “Women, my dear fellow; women!”
+
+“I don’t understand it,” replied Prince Andrew. “Women who are
+comme il faut, that’s a different matter; but the Kurágins’ set of
+women, ‘women and wine’ I don’t understand!”
+
+Pierre was staying at Prince Vasíli Kurágin’s and sharing the
+dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to
+reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew’s sister.
+
+“Do you know?” said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy
+thought, “seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading such
+a life I can’t decide or think properly about anything. One’s head
+aches, and one spends all one’s money. He asked me for tonight, but I
+won’t go.”
+
+“You give me your word of honor not to go?”
+
+“On my honor!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+It was past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a
+cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending
+to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more he
+felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was light
+enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed more like
+morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole
+Kurágin was expecting the usual set for cards that evening, after which
+there was generally a drinking bout, finishing with visits of a kind
+Pierre was very fond of.
+
+“I should like to go to Kurágin’s,” thought he.
+
+But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go
+there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so
+passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to
+that he decided to go. The thought immediately occurred to him that his
+promise to Prince Andrew was of no account, because before he gave it
+he had already promised Prince Anatole to come to his gathering;
+“besides,” thought he, “all such ‘words of honor’ are
+conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if
+one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so
+extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all the
+same!” Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort, nullifying
+all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kurágin’s.
+
+Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards’ barracks, in which
+Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the stairs,
+and went in at the open door. There was no one in the anteroom; empty
+bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of
+alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the distance.
+
+Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet dispersed.
+Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in which were the
+remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw him, was drinking on
+the sly what was left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds of
+laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the growling of a bear, and
+general commotion. Some eight or nine young men were crowding anxiously
+round an open window. Three others were romping with a young bear, one
+pulling him by the chain and trying to set him at the others.
+
+“I bet a hundred on Stevens!” shouted one.
+
+“Mind, no holding on!” cried another.
+
+“I bet on Dólokhov!” cried a third. “Kurágin, you part our
+hands.”
+
+“There, leave Bruin alone; here’s a bet on.”
+
+“At one draught, or he loses!” shouted a fourth.
+
+“Jacob, bring a bottle!” shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow
+who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine
+linen shirt unfastened in front. “Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here is
+Pétya! Good man!” cried he, addressing Pierre.
+
+Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,
+particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober
+ring, cried from the window: “Come here; part the bets!” This was
+Dólokhov, an officer of the Semënov regiment, a notorious gambler and
+duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him
+merrily.
+
+“I don’t understand. What’s it all about?”
+
+“Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here,” said Anatole, and
+taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.
+
+“First of all you must drink!”
+
+Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows at
+the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and listening
+to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre’s glass while
+explaining that Dólokhov was betting with Stevens, an English naval
+officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge
+of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.
+
+“Go on, you must drink it all,” said Anatole, giving Pierre the last
+glass, “or I won’t let you go!”
+
+“No, I won’t,” said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up
+to the window.
+
+Dólokhov was holding the Englishman’s hand and clearly and distinctly
+repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself particularly to
+Anatole and Pierre.
+
+Dólokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue eyes. He
+was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore no mustache,
+so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was clearly
+seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely curved. The middle
+of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed firmly on the firm
+lower one, and something like two distinct smiles played continually
+round the two corners of the mouth; this, together with the resolute,
+insolent intelligence of his eyes, produced an effect which made it
+impossible not to notice his face. Dólokhov was a man of small means
+and no connections. Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of
+rubles, Dólokhov lived with him and had placed himself on such a
+footing that all who knew them, including Anatole himself, respected him
+more than they did Anatole. Dólokhov could play all games and nearly
+always won. However much he drank, he never lost his clearheadedness.
+Both Kurágin and Dólokhov were at that time notorious among the rakes
+and scapegraces of Petersburg.
+
+The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented anyone
+from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two footmen, who
+were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions and shouts of
+the gentlemen around.
+
+Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted to
+smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame, but
+could not move it. He smashed a pane.
+
+“You have a try, Hercules,” said he, turning to Pierre.
+
+Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame out with
+a crash.
+
+“Take it right out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said
+Dólokhov.
+
+“Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?” said Anatole.
+
+“First-rate,” said Pierre, looking at Dólokhov, who with a bottle
+of rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of
+the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.
+
+Dólokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the window
+sill. “Listen!” cried he, standing there and addressing those in the
+room. All were silent.
+
+“I bet fifty imperials”—he spoke French that the Englishman might
+understand him, but he did not speak it very well—“I bet fifty
+imperials ... or do you wish to make it a hundred?” added he,
+addressing the Englishman.
+
+“No, fifty,” replied the latter.
+
+“All right. Fifty imperials ... that I will drink a whole bottle of
+rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on this
+spot” (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the window)
+“and without holding on to anything. Is that right?”
+
+“Quite right,” said the Englishman.
+
+Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the buttons
+of his coat and looking down at him—the Englishman was short—began
+repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.
+
+“Wait!” cried Dólokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window
+sill to attract attention. “Wait a bit, Kurágin. Listen! If
+anyone else does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you
+understand?”
+
+The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to
+accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and though
+he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on translating
+Dólokhov’s words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar of the
+Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the window
+sill, leaned over, and looked down.
+
+“Oh! Oh! Oh!” he muttered, looking down from the window at the
+stones of the pavement.
+
+“Shut up!” cried Dólokhov, pushing him away from the window. The
+lad jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.
+
+Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it easily,
+Dólokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and lowered
+his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he adjusted himself
+on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right and then to
+the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and
+placed them on the window sill, though it was already quite light.
+Dólokhov’s back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were lit
+up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the Englishman in
+front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older than the others
+present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and angry look and wanted
+to seize hold of Dólokhov’s shirt.
+
+“I say, this is folly! He’ll be killed,” said this more sensible
+man.
+
+Anatole stopped him.
+
+“Don’t touch him! You’ll startle him and then he’ll be killed.
+Eh?... What then?... Eh?”
+
+Dólokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, arranged
+himself on his seat.
+
+“If anyone comes meddling again,” said he, emitting the words
+separately through his thin compressed lips, “I will throw him down
+there. Now then!”
+
+Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the bottle
+and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised his free hand
+to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped to pick up some
+broken glass remained in that position without taking his eyes from the
+window and from Dólokhov’s back. Anatole stood erect with staring
+eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways, pursing up his lips. The man
+who had wished to stop the affair ran to a corner of the room and threw
+himself on a sofa with his face to the wall. Pierre hid his face, from
+which a faint smile forgot to fade though his features now expressed
+horror and fear. All were still. Pierre took his hands from his eyes.
+Dólokhov still sat in the same position, only his head was thrown
+further back till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand
+holding the bottle was lifted higher and higher and trembled with the
+effort. The bottle was emptying perceptibly and rising still higher
+and his head tilting yet further back. “Why is it so long?” thought
+Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had elapsed.
+Suddenly Dólokhov made a backward movement with his spine, and his arm
+trembled nervously; this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip
+as he sat on the sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and
+arm wavered still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch
+the window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered
+his eyes and thought he would never open them again. Suddenly he was
+aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dólokhov was standing on the
+window sill, with a pale but radiant face.
+
+“It’s empty.”
+
+He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dólokhov
+jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.
+
+“Well done!... Fine fellow!... There’s a bet for you!... Devil take
+you!” came from different sides.
+
+The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money.
+Dólokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the
+window sill.
+
+“Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I’ll do the same thing!”
+he suddenly cried. “Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a
+bottle. I’ll do it.... Bring a bottle!”
+
+“Let him do it, let him do it,” said Dólokhov, smiling.
+
+“What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, you go
+giddy even on a staircase,” exclaimed several voices.
+
+“I’ll drink it! Let’s have a bottle of rum!” shouted Pierre,
+banging the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to
+climb out of the window.
+
+They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who
+touched him was sent flying.
+
+“No, you’ll never manage him that way,” said Anatole. “Wait a
+bit and I’ll get round him.... Listen! I’ll take your bet tomorrow,
+but now we are all going to ——’s.”
+
+“Come on then,” cried Pierre. “Come on!... And we’ll take Bruin
+with us.”
+
+And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground,
+and began dancing round the room with it.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Prince Vasíli kept the promise he had given to Princess Drubetskáya
+who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Borís on the evening of
+Anna Pávlovna’s soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an
+exception made, and Borís transferred into the regiment of Semënov
+Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment
+to Kutúzov’s staff despite all Anna Mikháylovna’s endeavors and
+entreaties. Soon after Anna Pávlovna’s reception Anna Mikháylovna
+returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich relations, the
+Rostóvs, with whom she stayed when in the town and where her darling
+Bóry, who had only just entered a regiment of the line and was being
+at once transferred to the Guards as a cornet, had been educated from
+childhood and lived for years at a time. The Guards had already left
+Petersburg on the tenth of August, and her son, who had remained in
+Moscow for his equipment, was to join them on the march to Radzivílov.
+
+It was St. Natalia’s day and the name day of two of the Rostóvs—the
+mother and the youngest daughter—both named Nataly. Ever since
+the morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going
+continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostóva’s big house on
+the Povarskáya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself and
+her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing room with the visitors
+who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one another in
+relays.
+
+The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental type
+of face, evidently worn out with childbearing—she had had twelve.
+A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a
+distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikháylovna
+Drubetskáya, who as a member of the household was also seated in the
+drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the visitors. The young
+people were in one of the inner rooms, not considering it necessary to
+take part in receiving the visitors. The count met the guests and saw
+them off, inviting them all to dinner.
+
+“I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher,” or “ma chère”—he
+called everyone without exception and without the slightest variation
+in his tone, “my dear,” whether they were above or below him in
+rank—“I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose name
+day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be offended,
+ma chère! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come, mon cher!”
+These words he repeated to everyone without exception or variation, and
+with the same expression on his full, cheerful, clean-shaven face, the
+same firm pressure of the hand and the same quick, repeated bows. As
+soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned to one of those who were
+still in the drawing room, drew a chair toward him or her, and jauntily
+spreading out his legs and putting his hands on his knees with the air
+of a man who enjoys life and knows how to live, he swayed to and
+fro with dignity, offered surmises about the weather, or touched on
+questions of health, sometimes in Russian and sometimes in very bad but
+self-confident French; then again, like a man weary but unflinching in
+the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see some visitors off and, stroking
+his scanty gray hairs over his bald patch, also asked them to dinner.
+Sometimes on his way back from the anteroom he would pass through the
+conservatory and pantry into the large marble dining hall, where tables
+were being set out for eighty people; and looking at the footmen, who
+were bringing in silver and china, moving tables, and unfolding damask
+table linen, he would call Dmítri Vasílevich, a man of good family and
+the manager of all his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the
+enormous table would say: “Well, Dmítri, you’ll see that things are
+all as they should be? That’s right! The great thing is the serving,
+that’s it.” And with a complacent sigh he would return to the
+drawing room.
+
+“Márya Lvóvna Karágina and her daughter!” announced the
+countess’ gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing
+room. The countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold
+snuffbox with her husband’s portrait on it.
+
+“I’m quite worn out by these callers. However, I’ll see her and
+no more. She is so affected. Ask her in,” she said to the footman in a
+sad voice, as if saying: “Very well, finish me off.”
+
+A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling
+daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.
+
+“Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child ...
+at the Razumóvski’s ball ... and Countess Apráksina ... I was
+so delighted...” came the sounds of animated feminine voices,
+interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and
+the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which last
+out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of dresses
+and say, “I am so delighted... Mamma’s health... and Countess
+Apráksina...” and then, again rustling, pass into the anteroom, put
+on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation was on the chief
+topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and celebrated beau of
+Catherine’s day, Count Bezúkhov, and about his illegitimate son
+Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna Pávlovna’s
+reception.
+
+“I am so sorry for the poor count,” said the visitor. “He is in
+such bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill
+him!”
+
+“What is that?” asked the countess as if she did not know what the
+visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of
+Count Bezúkhov’s distress some fifteen times.
+
+“That’s what comes of a modern education,” exclaimed the visitor.
+“It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do
+as he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible
+things that he has been expelled by the police.”
+
+“You don’t say so!” replied the countess.
+
+“He chose his friends badly,” interposed Anna Mikháylovna.
+“Prince Vasíli’s son, he, and a certain Dólokhov have, it is said,
+been up to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it.
+Dólokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezúkhov’s son sent
+back to Moscow. Anatole Kurágin’s father managed somehow to get his
+son’s affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg.”
+
+“But what have they been up to?” asked the countess.
+
+“They are regular brigands, especially Dólokhov,” replied the
+visitor. “He is a son of Márya Ivánovna Dólokhova, such a worthy
+woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear somewhere,
+put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The
+police tried to interfere, and what did the young men do? They tied
+a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka
+Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his
+back!”
+
+“What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!” shouted
+the count, dying with laughter.
+
+“Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?”
+
+Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
+
+“It was all they could do to rescue the poor man,” continued the
+visitor. “And to think it is Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov’s son
+who amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so
+well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has
+done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in
+spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite
+declined: I have my daughters to consider.”
+
+“Why do you say this young man is so rich?” asked the countess,
+turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of inattention.
+“His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also is
+illegitimate.”
+
+The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
+
+“I should think he has a score of them.”
+
+Princess Anna Mikháylovna intervened in the conversation, evidently
+wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went on in
+society.
+
+“The fact of the matter is,” said she significantly, and also in a
+half whisper, “everyone knows Count Cyril’s reputation.... He has
+lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite.”
+
+“How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!” remarked the
+countess. “I have never seen a handsomer man.”
+
+“He is very much altered now,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “Well, as
+I was saying, Prince Vasíli is the next heir through his wife, but the
+count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to
+the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death—and he is
+so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from
+Petersburg—no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune, Pierre
+or Prince Vasíli. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know
+it all very well for Prince Vasíli told me himself. Besides, Cyril
+Vladímirovich is my mother’s second cousin. He’s also my Bóry’s
+godfather,” she added, as if she attached no importance at all to the
+fact.
+
+“Prince Vasíli arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on
+some inspection business,” remarked the visitor.
+
+“Yes, but between ourselves,” said the princess, “that is a
+pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladímirovich,
+hearing how ill he is.”
+
+“But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke,” said the count;
+and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the
+young ladies. “I can just imagine what a funny figure that policeman
+cut!”
+
+And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly form
+again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who always eats
+well and, in particular, drinks well. “So do come and dine with us!”
+he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably,
+but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they
+now rose and took their leave. The visitor’s daughter was already
+smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when
+suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls
+running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a girl
+of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin frock,
+darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was evident
+that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far. Behind her in
+the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat collar, an officer
+of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump rosy-faced boy in a short
+jacket.
+
+The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his arms wide
+and threw them round the little girl who had run in.
+
+“Ah, here she is!” he exclaimed laughing. “My pet, whose name day
+it is. My dear pet!”
+
+“Ma chère, there is a time for everything,” said the countess with
+feigned severity. “You spoil her, Ilyá,” she added, turning to her
+husband.
+
+“How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name
+day,” said the visitor. “What a charming child,” she added,
+addressing the mother.
+
+This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life—with
+childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her
+bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs
+in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers—was just at that
+charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not
+yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed
+face in the lace of her mother’s mantilla—not paying the least
+attention to her severe remark—and began to laugh. She laughed, and in
+fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she produced
+from the folds of her frock.
+
+“Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see...” was all Natásha
+managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against
+her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even
+the prim visitor could not help joining in.
+
+“Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you,” said the
+mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and turning
+to the visitor she added: “She is my youngest girl.”
+
+Natásha, raising her face for a moment from her mother’s mantilla,
+glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.
+
+The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it
+necessary to take some part in it.
+
+“Tell me, my dear,” said she to Natásha, “is Mimi a relation of
+yours? A daughter, I suppose?”
+
+Natásha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension to childish
+things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.
+
+Meanwhile the younger generation: Borís, the officer, Anna
+Mikháylovna’s son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count’s eldest
+son; Sónya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece, and little Pétya,
+his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were
+obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement
+and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back rooms,
+from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had
+been more amusing than the drawing room talk of society scandals, the
+weather, and Countess Apráksina. Now and then they glanced at one
+another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.
+
+The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood,
+were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though not alike. Borís
+was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had regular, delicate
+features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open expression.
+Dark hairs were already showing on his upper lip, and his whole face
+expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas blushed when he entered
+the drawing room. He evidently tried to find something to say, but
+failed. Borís on the contrary at once found his footing, and related
+quietly and humorously how he had known that doll Mimi when she was
+still quite a young lady, before her nose was broken; how she had aged
+during the five years he had known her, and how her head had cracked
+right across the skull. Having said this he glanced at Natásha.
+She turned away from him and glanced at her younger brother, who was
+screwing up his eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable
+to control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed from the room as
+fast as her nimble little feet would carry her. Borís did not laugh.
+
+“You were meaning to go out, weren’t you, Mamma? Do you want the
+carriage?” he asked his mother with a smile.
+
+“Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready,” she answered,
+returning his smile.
+
+Borís quietly left the room and went in search of Natásha. The plump
+boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been
+disturbed.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting the
+young lady visitor and the countess’ eldest daughter (who was four
+years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person),
+were Nicholas and Sónya, the niece. Sónya was a slender little
+brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long
+lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny
+tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but
+graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements,
+by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain
+coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown
+kitten which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently
+considered it proper to show an interest in the general conversation by
+smiling, but in spite of herself her eyes under their thick long lashes
+watched her cousin who was going to join the army, with such passionate
+girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant impose
+upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had settled down only to
+spring up with more energy and again play with her cousin as soon as
+they too could, like Natásha and Borís, escape from the drawing room.
+
+“Ah yes, my dear,” said the count, addressing the visitor and
+pointing to Nicholas, “his friend Borís has become an officer, and
+so for friendship’s sake he is leaving the university and me, his
+old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there was a
+place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department! Isn’t
+that friendship?” remarked the count in an inquiring tone.
+
+“But they say that war has been declared,” replied the visitor.
+
+“They’ve been saying so a long while,” said the count, “and
+they’ll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My
+dear, there’s friendship for you,” he repeated. “He’s joining
+the hussars.”
+
+The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
+
+“It’s not at all from friendship,” declared Nicholas, flaring
+up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. “It is not from
+friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation.”
+
+He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were both
+regarding him with a smile of approbation.
+
+“Schubert, the colonel of the Pávlograd Hussars, is dining with us
+today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him.
+It can’t be helped!” said the count, shrugging his shoulders and
+speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.
+
+“I have already told you, Papa,” said his son, “that if you
+don’t wish to let me go, I’ll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere
+except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.—I
+don’t know how to hide what I feel.” As he spoke he kept glancing
+with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sónya and the young
+lady visitor.
+
+The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any moment
+to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.
+
+“All right, all right!” said the old count. “He always flares up!
+This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he
+rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,” he
+added, not noticing his visitor’s sarcastic smile.
+
+The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karágina turned to
+young Rostóv.
+
+“What a pity you weren’t at the Arkhárovs’ on Thursday. It was so
+dull without you,” said she, giving him a tender smile.
+
+The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish
+smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation
+without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart
+of Sónya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk
+he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and
+hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial smile
+on her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas’ animation
+vanished. He waited for the first pause in the conversation, and then
+with a distressed face left the room to find Sónya.
+
+“How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their
+sleeves!” said Anna Mikháylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out.
+“Cousinage—dangereux voisinage,” * she added.
+
+     * Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
+
+“Yes,” said the countess when the brightness these young people had
+brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no
+one had put but which was always in her mind, “and how much suffering,
+how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in
+them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is
+always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both
+for girls and boys.”
+
+“It all depends on the bringing up,” remarked the visitor.
+
+“Yes, you’re quite right,” continued the countess. “Till now I
+have always, thank God, been my children’s friend and had their full
+confidence,” said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who
+imagine that their children have no secrets from them. “I know I shall
+always be my daughters’ first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with
+his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can’t help it), he
+will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men.”
+
+“Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters,” chimed in the count,
+who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding
+that everything was splendid. “Just fancy: wants to be an hussar.
+What’s one to do, my dear?”
+
+“What a charming creature your younger girl is,” said the visitor;
+“a little volcano!”
+
+“Yes, a regular volcano,” said the count. “Takes after me! And
+what a voice she has; though she’s my daughter, I tell the truth
+when I say she’ll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an
+Italian to give her lessons.”
+
+“Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train
+it at that age.”
+
+“Oh no, not at all too young!” replied the count. “Why, our
+mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen.”
+
+“And she’s in love with Borís already. Just fancy!” said the
+countess with a gentle smile, looking at Borís and went on, evidently
+concerned with a thought that always occupied her: “Now you see if I
+were to be severe with her and to forbid it ... goodness knows what they
+might be up to on the sly” (she meant that they would be kissing),
+“but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come running to
+me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I
+spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister I
+was stricter.”
+
+“Yes, I was brought up quite differently,” remarked the handsome
+elder daughter, Countess Véra, with a smile.
+
+But the smile did not enhance Véra’s beauty as smiles generally do;
+on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant,
+expression. Véra was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at
+learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said
+was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone—the visitors
+and countess alike—turned to look at her as if wondering why she had
+said it, and they all felt awkward.
+
+“People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to
+make something exceptional of them,” said the visitor.
+
+“What’s the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
+clever with Véra,” said the count. “Well, what of that? She’s
+turned out splendidly all the same,” he added, winking at Véra.
+
+The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.
+
+“What manners! I thought they would never go,” said the countess,
+when she had seen her guests out.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+When Natásha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
+conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation
+in the drawing room, waiting for Borís to come out. She was already
+growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming
+at once, when she heard the young man’s discreet steps approaching
+neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natásha dashed swiftly among the
+flower tubs and hid there.
+
+Borís paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a little
+dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined
+his handsome face. Natásha, very still, peered out from her ambush,
+waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while before the
+glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natásha was about to
+call him but changed her mind. “Let him look for me,” thought she.
+Hardly had Borís gone than Sónya, flushed, in tears, and muttering
+angrily, came in at the other door. Natásha checked her first impulse
+to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching—as
+under an invisible cap—to see what went on in the world. She was
+experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sónya, muttering to herself,
+kept looking round toward the drawing room door. It opened and Nicholas
+came in.
+
+“Sónya, what is the matter with you? How can you?” said he, running
+up to her.
+
+“It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!” sobbed Sónya.
+
+“Ah, I know what it is.”
+
+“Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!”
+
+“Só-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that,
+for a mere fancy?” said Nicholas taking her hand.
+
+Sónya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natásha, not stirring
+and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes.
+“What will happen now?” thought she.
+
+“Sónya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are
+everything!” said Nicholas. “And I will prove it to you.”
+
+“I don’t like you to talk like that.”
+
+“Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sónya!” He drew her to him
+and kissed her.
+
+“Oh, how nice,” thought Natásha; and when Sónya and Nicholas had
+gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Borís to her.
+
+“Borís, come here,” said she with a sly and significant look. “I
+have something to tell you. Here, here!” and she led him into the
+conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.
+
+Borís followed her, smiling.
+
+“What is the something?” asked he.
+
+She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown
+down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
+
+“Kiss the doll,” said she.
+
+Borís looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
+reply.
+
+“Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,” said she, and
+went further in among the plants and threw down the doll. “Closer,
+closer!” she whispered.
+
+She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and
+fear appeared on her flushed face.
+
+“And me? Would you like to kiss me?” she whispered almost inaudibly,
+glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from
+excitement.
+
+Borís blushed.
+
+“How funny you are!” he said, bending down to her and blushing still
+more, but he waited and did nothing.
+
+Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so
+that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing
+back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.
+
+Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs
+and stood, hanging her head.
+
+“Natásha,” he said, “you know that I love you, but....”
+
+“You are in love with me?” Natásha broke in.
+
+“Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that.... In another four
+years ... then I will ask for your hand.”
+
+Natásha considered.
+
+“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted on her slender
+little fingers. “All right! Then it’s settled?”
+
+A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
+
+“Settled!” replied Borís.
+
+“Forever?” said the little girl. “Till death itself?”
+
+She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining
+sitting room.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave
+orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to
+dinner all who came “to congratulate.” The countess wished to have
+a tête-à-tête talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna
+Mikháylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
+Petersburg. Anna Mikháylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face,
+drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
+
+“With you I will be quite frank,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “There
+are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your
+friendship.”
+
+Anna Mikháylovna looked at Véra and paused. The countess pressed her
+friend’s hand.
+
+“Véra,” she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a
+favorite, “how is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see you are
+not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or...”
+
+The handsome Véra smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.
+
+“If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,” she replied
+as she rose to go to her own room.
+
+But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting,
+one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sónya was
+sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the
+first he had ever written. Borís and Natásha were at the other window
+and ceased talking when Véra entered. Sónya and Natásha looked at
+Véra with guilty, happy faces.
+
+It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but
+apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Véra.
+
+“How often have I asked you not to take my things?” she said. “You
+have a room of your own,” and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
+
+“In a minute, in a minute,” he said, dipping his pen.
+
+“You always manage to do things at the wrong time,” continued Véra.
+“You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed
+of you.”
+
+Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one
+replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the
+room with the inkstand in her hand.
+
+“And at your age what secrets can there be between Natásha and
+Borís, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!”
+
+“Now, Véra, what does it matter to you?” said Natásha in defense,
+speaking very gently.
+
+She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
+everyone.
+
+“Very silly,” said Véra. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”
+
+“All have secrets of their own,” answered Natásha, getting warmer.
+“We don’t interfere with you and Berg.”
+
+“I should think not,” said Véra, “because there can never be
+anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are
+behaving with Borís.”
+
+“Natálya Ilyníchna behaves very well to me,” remarked Borís. “I
+have nothing to complain of.”
+
+“Don’t, Borís! You are such a diplomat that it is really
+tiresome,” said Natásha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly.
+(She used the word “diplomat,” which was just then much in vogue
+among the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) “Why
+does she bother me?” And she added, turning to Véra, “You’ll
+never understand it, because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no
+heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more” (this nickname,
+bestowed on Véra by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), “and
+your greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with
+Berg as much as you please,” she finished quickly.
+
+“I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors...”
+
+“Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,” put in Nicholas—“said
+unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let’s go to the
+nursery.”
+
+All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
+
+“The unpleasant things were said to me,” remarked Véra, “I said
+none to anyone.”
+
+“Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!” shouted laughing voices
+through the door.
+
+The handsome Véra, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant
+effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been
+said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf.
+Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and
+calmer.
+
+
+In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.
+
+“Ah, my dear,” said the countess, “my life is not all roses
+either. Don’t I know that at the rate we are living our means won’t
+last long? It’s all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the
+country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows what
+besides! But don’t let’s talk about me; tell me how you managed
+everything. I often wonder at you, Annette—how at your age you
+can rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those
+ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It’s
+quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn’t possibly
+do it.”
+
+“Ah, my love,” answered Anna Mikháylovna, “God grant you never
+know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you love
+to distraction! One learns many things then,” she added with a certain
+pride. “That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of those
+big people I write a note: ‘Princess So-and-So desires an interview
+with So and-So,’ and then I take a cab and go myself two, three, or
+four times—till I get what I want. I don’t mind what they think of
+me.”
+
+“Well, and to whom did you apply about Bóry?” asked the countess.
+“You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my Nicholas
+is going as a cadet. There’s no one to interest himself for him. To
+whom did you apply?”
+
+“To Prince Vasíli. He was so kind. He at once agreed to everything,
+and put the matter before the Emperor,” said Princess Anna
+Mikháylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she
+had endured to gain her end.
+
+“Has Prince Vasíli aged much?” asked the countess. “I have not
+seen him since we acted together at the Rumyántsovs’ theatricals. I
+expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days,” said
+the countess, with a smile.
+
+“He is just the same as ever,” replied Anna Mikháylovna,
+“overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head
+at all. He said to me, ‘I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear
+Princess. I am at your command.’ Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very
+kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do
+anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way that my
+position is now a terrible one,” continued Anna Mikháylovna, sadly,
+dropping her voice. “My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and makes no
+progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a penny and don’t
+know how to equip Borís.” She took out her handkerchief and began to
+cry. “I need five hundred rubles, and have only one twenty-five-ruble
+note. I am in such a state.... My only hope now is in Count Cyril
+Vladímirovich Bezúkhov. If he will not assist his godson—you know
+he is Bóry’s godfather—and allow him something for his maintenance,
+all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I shall not be able to
+equip him.”
+
+The countess’ eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.
+
+“I often think, though, perhaps it’s a sin,” said the princess,
+“that here lives Count Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov so rich, all
+alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It’s a
+burden to him, and Bóry’s life is only just beginning....”
+
+“Surely he will leave something to Borís,” said the countess.
+
+“Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish.
+Still, I will take Borís and go to see him at once, and I shall speak
+to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it’s
+really all the same to me when my son’s fate is at stake.” The
+princess rose. “It’s now two o’clock and you dine at four. There
+will just be time.”
+
+And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the most of
+time, Anna Mikháylovna sent someone to call her son, and went into the
+anteroom with him.
+
+“Good-by, my dear,” said she to the countess who saw her to the
+door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, “Wish me
+good luck.”
+
+“Are you going to Count Cyril Vladímirovich, my dear?” said the
+count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added:
+“If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the
+house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite him, my
+dear. We will see how Tarás distinguishes himself today. He says Count
+Orlóv never gave such a dinner as ours will be!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+“My dear Borís,” said Princess Anna Mikháylovna to her son as
+Countess Rostóva’s carriage in which they were seated drove over the
+straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
+Vladímirovich Bezúkhov’s house. “My dear Borís,” said the
+mother, drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying
+it timidly and tenderly on her son’s arm, “be affectionate and
+attentive to him. Count Cyril Vladímirovich is your godfather after
+all, and your future depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice
+to him, as you so well know how to be.”
+
+“If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of
+it...” answered her son coldly. “But I have promised and will do it
+for your sake.”
+
+Although the hall porter saw someone’s carriage standing at the
+entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to
+be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the
+rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady’s old
+cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses, and,
+hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency was worse
+today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.
+
+“We may as well go back,” said the son in French.
+
+“My dear!” exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand
+on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.
+
+Borís said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without taking
+off his cloak.
+
+“My friend,” said Anna Mikháylovna in gentle tones, addressing
+the hall porter, “I know Count Cyril Vladímirovich is very ill...
+that’s why I have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him,
+my friend... I only need see Prince Vasíli Sergéevich: he is staying
+here, is he not? Please announce me.”
+
+The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and turned
+away.
+
+“Princess Drubetskáya to see Prince Vasíli Sergéevich,” he called
+to a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat,
+who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.
+
+The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a large
+Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes briskly
+ascended the carpeted stairs.
+
+“My dear,” she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a
+touch, “you promised me!”
+
+The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.
+
+They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to the
+apartments assigned to Prince Vasíli.
+
+Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall, were
+about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as they
+entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasíli
+came out—wearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast,
+as was his custom when at home—taking leave of a good-looking,
+dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.
+
+“Then it is certain?” said the prince.
+
+“Prince, humanum est errare, * but...” replied the doctor,
+swallowing his r’s, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French
+accent.
+
+     * To err is human.
+
+“Very well, very well...”
+
+Seeing Anna Mikháylovna and her son, Prince Vasíli dismissed the
+doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of
+inquiry. The son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow suddenly
+clouded his mother’s face, and he smiled slightly.
+
+“Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our
+dear invalid?” said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive look
+fixed on her.
+
+Prince Vasíli stared at her and at Borís questioningly and perplexed.
+Borís bowed politely. Prince Vasíli without acknowledging the bow
+turned to Anna Mikháylovna, answering her query by a movement of the
+head and lips indicating very little hope for the patient.
+
+“Is it possible?” exclaimed Anna Mikháylovna. “Oh, how awful!
+It is terrible to think.... This is my son,” she added, indicating
+Borís. “He wanted to thank you himself.”
+
+Borís bowed again politely.
+
+“Believe me, Prince, a mother’s heart will never forget what you
+have done for us.”
+
+“I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna
+Mikháylovna,” said Prince Vasíli, arranging his lace frill, and in
+tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikháylovna whom he had placed
+under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than he
+had done in Petersburg at Anna Schérer’s reception.
+
+“Try to serve well and show yourself worthy,” added he, addressing
+Borís with severity. “I am glad.... Are you here on leave?” he went
+on in his usual tone of indifference.
+
+“I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,”
+replied Borís, betraying neither annoyance at the prince’s brusque
+manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so quietly
+and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.
+
+“Are you living with your mother?”
+
+“I am living at Countess Rostóva’s,” replied Borís, again
+adding, “your excellency.”
+
+“That is, with Ilyá Rostóv who married Nataly Shinshiná,” said
+Anna Mikháylovna.
+
+“I know, I know,” answered Prince Vasíli in his monotonous voice.
+“I never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that
+unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler too,
+I am told.”
+
+“But a very kind man, Prince,” said Anna Mikháylovna with a
+pathetic smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostóv deserved this
+censure, but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. “What
+do the doctors say?” asked the princess after a pause, her worn face
+again expressing deep sorrow.
+
+“They give little hope,” replied the prince.
+
+“And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me
+and Borís. He is his godson,” she added, her tone suggesting that
+this fact ought to give Prince Vasíli much satisfaction.
+
+Prince Vasíli became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikháylovna saw that
+he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezúkhov’s fortune,
+and hastened to reassure him.
+
+“If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,”
+said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern, “I
+know his character: noble, upright ... but you see he has no one with
+him except the young princesses.... They are still young....” She bent
+her head and continued in a whisper: “Has he performed his final duty,
+Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can make things no
+worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if he is so ill.
+We women, Prince,” and she smiled tenderly, “always know how to say
+these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it may be for
+me. I am used to suffering.”
+
+Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he had done
+at Anna Pávlovna’s, that it would be difficult to get rid of Anna
+Mikháylovna.
+
+“Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna
+Mikháylovna?” said he. “Let us wait until evening. The doctors are
+expecting a crisis.”
+
+“But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the
+welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a
+Christian...”
+
+A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, the
+count’s niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of her
+body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince Vasíli
+turned to her.
+
+“Well, how is he?”
+
+“Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise...” said the
+princess, looking at Anna Mikháylovna as at a stranger.
+
+“Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you,” said Anna Mikháylovna with a
+happy smile, ambling lightly up to the count’s niece. “I have come,
+and am at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you
+have gone through,” and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.
+
+The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room as
+Anna Mikháylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position she
+had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasíli to
+take a seat beside her.
+
+“Borís,” she said to her son with a smile, “I shall go in to see
+the count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile
+and don’t forget to give him the Rostóvs’ invitation. They ask him
+to dinner. I suppose he won’t go?” she continued, turning to the
+prince.
+
+“On the contrary,” replied the prince, who had plainly become
+depressed, “I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young
+man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Borís down one flight of
+stairs and up another, to Pierre’s rooms.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in
+Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and
+sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostóv’s was true.
+Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now been
+for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his father’s
+house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade would be
+already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father—who were
+never favorably disposed toward him—would have used it to turn the
+count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his arrival went to
+his father’s part of the house. Entering the drawing room, where the
+princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the ladies, two of whom
+were sitting at embroidery frames while a third read aloud. It was the
+eldest who was reading—the one who had met Anna Mikháylovna. The
+two younger ones were embroidering: both were rosy and pretty and they
+differed only in that one had a little mole on her lip which made her
+much prettier. Pierre was received as if he were a corpse or a leper.
+The eldest princess paused in her reading and silently stared at him
+with frightened eyes; the second assumed precisely the same expression;
+while the youngest, the one with the mole, who was of a cheerful and
+lively disposition, bent over her frame to hide a smile probably evoked
+by the amusing scene she foresaw. She drew her wool down through the
+canvas and, scarcely able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying
+to make out the pattern.
+
+“How do you do, cousin?” said Pierre. “You don’t recognize
+me?”
+
+“I recognize you only too well, too well.”
+
+“How is the count? Can I see him?” asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual,
+but unabashed.
+
+“The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently you
+have done your best to increase his mental sufferings.”
+
+“Can I see the count?” Pierre again asked.
+
+“Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see
+him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle’s beef tea is ready—it is
+almost time,” she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were
+busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he,
+Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.
+
+Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed and
+said: “Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can see
+him.”
+
+And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of the
+sister with the mole.
+
+Next day Prince Vasíli had arrived and settled in the count’s house.
+He sent for Pierre and said to him: “My dear fellow, if you are going
+to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very badly; that
+is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very ill, and you must
+not see him at all.”
+
+Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole time in
+his rooms upstairs.
+
+When Borís appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his room,
+stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at the wall,
+as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and glaring savagely
+over his spectacles, and then again resuming his walk, muttering
+indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.
+
+“England is done for,” said he, scowling and pointing his finger
+at someone unseen. “Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the
+rights of man, is sentenced to...” But before Pierre—who at that
+moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just
+effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured
+London—could pronounce Pitt’s sentence, he saw a well-built and
+handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left
+Moscow when Borís was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten him,
+but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Borís by the hand
+with a friendly smile.
+
+“Do you remember me?” asked Borís quietly with a pleasant smile.
+“I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not
+well.”
+
+“Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,”
+answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.
+
+Borís felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider
+it necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least
+embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.
+
+“Count Rostóv asks you to come to dinner today,” said he, after a
+considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.
+
+“Ah, Count Rostóv!” exclaimed Pierre joyfully. “Then you are his
+son, Ilyá? Only fancy, I didn’t know you at first. Do you remember
+how we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It’s such an
+age...”
+
+“You are mistaken,” said Borís deliberately, with a bold and
+slightly sarcastic smile. “I am Borís, son of Princess Anna
+Mikháylovna Drubetskáya. Rostóv, the father, is Ilyá, and his son is
+Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot.”
+
+Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.
+
+“Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I’ve mixed everything up. One
+has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Borís? Of course. Well, now
+we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne expedition?
+The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon gets across the
+Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. If only Villeneuve
+doesn’t make a mess of things!”
+
+Borís knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read the
+papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve’s name.
+
+“We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal
+than with politics,” said he in his quiet ironical tone. “I know
+nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy
+with gossip,” he continued. “Just now they are talking about you and
+your father.”
+
+Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his companion’s
+sake that the latter might say something he would afterwards regret.
+But Borís spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, looking straight into
+Pierre’s eyes.
+
+“Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip,” Borís went on.
+“Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune,
+though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will...”
+
+“Yes, it is all very horrid,” interrupted Pierre, “very horrid.”
+
+Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say
+something disconcerting to himself.
+
+“And it must seem to you,” said Borís flushing slightly, but not
+changing his tone or attitude, “it must seem to you that everyone is
+trying to get something out of the rich man?”
+
+“So it does,” thought Pierre.
+
+“But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are
+quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are
+very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that
+your father is rich, I don’t regard myself as a relation of his, and
+neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him.”
+
+For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he jumped
+up from the sofa, seized Borís under the elbow in his quick, clumsy
+way, and, blushing far more than Borís, began to speak with a feeling
+of mingled shame and vexation.
+
+“Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I know
+very well...”
+
+But Borís again interrupted him.
+
+“I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You
+must excuse me,” said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being put
+at ease by him, “but I hope I have not offended you. I always make it
+a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you come to
+dinner at the Rostóvs’?”
+
+And Borís, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and
+extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,
+became quite pleasant again.
+
+“No, but I say,” said Pierre, calming down, “you are a wonderful
+fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you
+don’t know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we
+were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite understand.
+I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the courage, but
+it’s splendid. I am very glad to have made your acquaintance. It’s
+queer,” he added after a pause, “that you should have suspected
+me!” He began to laugh. “Well, what of it! I hope we’ll get better
+acquainted,” and he pressed Borís’ hand. “Do you know, I have not
+once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I am sorry for
+him as a man, but what can one do?”
+
+“And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?” asked
+Borís with a smile.
+
+Pierre saw that Borís wished to change the subject, and being of the
+same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the
+Boulogne expedition.
+
+A footman came in to summon Borís—the princess was going. Pierre, in
+order to make Borís’ better acquaintance, promised to come to dinner,
+and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his spectacles
+into Borís’ eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing up and
+down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an imaginary foe with
+his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance of that pleasant,
+intelligent, and resolute young man.
+
+As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a lonely
+life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man and made up
+his mind that they would be friends.
+
+Prince Vasíli saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her eyes
+and her face was tearful.
+
+“It is dreadful, dreadful!” she was saying, “but cost me what it
+may I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be
+left like this. Every moment is precious. I can’t think why his nieces
+put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare him!...
+Adieu, Prince! May God support you...”
+
+“Adieu, ma bonne,” answered Prince Vasíli turning away from her.
+
+“Oh, he is in a dreadful state,” said the mother to her son when
+they were in the carriage. “He hardly recognizes anybody.”
+
+“I don’t understand, Mamma—what is his attitude to Pierre?”
+asked the son.
+
+“The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it.”
+
+“But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?”
+
+“Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!”
+
+“Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma...”
+
+“Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!” exclaimed the mother.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+After Anna Mikháylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count Cyril
+Vladímirovich Bezúkhov, Countess Rostóva sat for a long time all
+alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.
+
+“What is the matter with you, my dear?” she said crossly to the maid
+who kept her waiting some minutes. “Don’t you wish to serve me? Then
+I’ll find you another place.”
+
+The countess was upset by her friend’s sorrow and humiliating poverty,
+and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with her always
+found expression in calling her maid “my dear” and speaking to her
+with exaggerated politeness.
+
+“I am very sorry, ma’am,” answered the maid.
+
+“Ask the count to come to me.”
+
+The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look as
+usual.
+
+“Well, little countess? What a sauté of game au madère we are to
+have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Tarás were
+not ill-spent. He is worth it!”
+
+He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands ruffling
+his gray hair.
+
+“What are your commands, little countess?”
+
+“You see, my dear... What’s that mess?” she said, pointing to his
+waistcoat. “It’s the sauté, most likely,” she added with a smile.
+“Well, you see, Count, I want some money.”
+
+Her face became sad.
+
+“Oh, little countess!” ... and the count began bustling to get out
+his pocketbook.
+
+“I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles,” and taking
+out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband’s waistcoat.
+
+“Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who’s there?” he called out
+in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call will
+rush to obey the summons. “Send Dmítri to me!”
+
+Dmítri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the count’s
+house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the room.
+
+“This is what I want, my dear fellow,” said the count to the
+deferential young man who had entered. “Bring me...” he reflected
+a moment, “yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don’t
+bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean ones
+for the countess.”
+
+“Yes, Dmítri, clean ones, please,” said the countess, sighing
+deeply.
+
+“When would you like them, your excellency?” asked Dmítri. “Allow
+me to inform you... But, don’t be uneasy,” he added, noticing that
+the count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always
+a sign of approaching anger. “I was forgetting... Do you wish it
+brought at once?”
+
+“Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess.”
+
+“What a treasure that Dmítri is,” added the count with a smile when
+the young man had departed. “There is never any ‘impossible’ with
+him. That’s a thing I hate! Everything is possible.”
+
+“Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,”
+said the countess. “But I am in great need of this sum.”
+
+“You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift,” said the
+count, and having kissed his wife’s hand he went back to his study.
+
+When Anna Mikháylovna returned from Count Bezúkhov’s the money, all
+in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the countess’
+little table, and Anna Mikháylovna noticed that something was agitating
+her.
+
+“Well, my dear?” asked the countess.
+
+“Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is so
+ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word...”
+
+“Annette, for heaven’s sake don’t refuse me,” the countess
+began, with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified,
+elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.
+
+Anna Mikháylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be
+ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.
+
+“This is for Borís from me, for his outfit.”
+
+Anna Mikháylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
+wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
+kindhearted, and because they—friends from childhood—had to think
+about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
+But those tears were pleasant to them both.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Countess Rostóva, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was
+already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen into
+his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes. From
+time to time he went out to ask: “Hasn’t she come yet?” They
+were expecting Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, known in society as le
+terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for
+common sense and frank plainness of speech. Márya Dmítrievna was known
+to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and Petersburg, and both
+cities wondered at her, laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told
+good stories about her, while none the less all without exception
+respected and feared her.
+
+In the count’s room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked
+of the war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the
+recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew
+it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were
+smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head
+first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers with evident
+pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he
+egged on against each other.
+
+One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and wrinkled
+face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most fashionable
+young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and,
+having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the
+smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an old bachelor,
+Shinshín, a cousin of the countess’, a man with “a sharp tongue”
+as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending to
+his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards,
+irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held his pipe in the
+middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting
+it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This was Lieutenant Berg, an
+officer in the Semënov regiment with whom Borís was to travel to join
+the army, and about whom Natásha had teased her elder sister Véra,
+speaking of Berg as her “intended.” The count sat between them and
+listened attentively. His favorite occupation when not playing boston, a
+card game he was very fond of, was that of listener, especially when he
+succeeded in setting two loquacious talkers at one another.
+
+“Well, then, old chap, mon très honorable Alphonse Kárlovich,”
+said Shinshín, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary Russian
+expressions with the choicest French phrases—which was a peculiarity
+of his speech. “Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l’état; *
+you want to make something out of your company?”
+
+     * You expect to make an income out of the government.
+
+“No, Peter Nikoláevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry
+the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
+position now, Peter Nikoláevich...”
+
+Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
+conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain calm
+and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no direct bearing
+on himself. He could remain silent for hours without being at all put
+out of countenance himself or making others uncomfortable, but as
+soon as the conversation concerned himself he would begin to talk
+circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.
+
+“Consider my position, Peter Nikoláevich. Were I in the cavalry I
+should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even
+with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and
+thirty,” said he, looking at Shinshín and the count with a joyful,
+pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must
+always be the chief desire of everyone else.
+
+“Besides that, Peter Nikoláevich, by exchanging into the Guards
+I shall be in a more prominent position,” continued Berg, “and
+vacancies occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think
+what can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to
+put a little aside and to send something to my father,” he went on,
+emitting a smoke ring.
+
+“La balance y est... * A German knows how to skin a flint, as the
+proverb says,” remarked Shinshín, moving his pipe to the other side
+of his mouth and winking at the count.
+
+      * So that squares matters.
+
+The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that Shinshín
+was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference,
+continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards he had already
+gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime
+the company commander might get killed and he, as senior in the company,
+might easily succeed to the post; how popular he was with everyone in
+the regiment, and how satisfied his father was with him. Berg evidently
+enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem to suspect that others,
+too, might have their own interests. But all he said was so prettily
+sedate, and the naïveté of his youthful egotism was so obvious, that
+he disarmed his hearers.
+
+“Well, my boy, you’ll get along wherever you go—foot or
+horse—that I’ll warrant,” said Shinshín, patting him on the
+shoulder and taking his feet off the sofa.
+
+Berg smiled joyously. The count, followed by his guests, went into the
+drawing room.
+
+It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests,
+expecting the summons to zakúska, * avoid engaging in any long
+conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in order
+to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The host and
+hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at one another,
+and the visitors try to guess from these glances who, or what, they are
+waiting for—some important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish
+that is not yet ready.
+
+     * Hors d’oeuvres.
+
+Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the
+middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come across,
+blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make him talk,
+but he went on naïvely looking around through his spectacles as if in
+search of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. He
+was in the way and was the only one who did not notice the fact. Most of
+the guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked with curiosity
+at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy, modest
+fellow could have played such a prank on a policeman.
+
+“You have only lately arrived?” the countess asked him.
+
+“Oui, madame,” replied he, looking around him.
+
+“You have not yet seen my husband?”
+
+“Non, madame.” He smiled quite inappropriately.
+
+“You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it’s very
+interesting.”
+
+“Very interesting.”
+
+The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikháylovna. The latter
+understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
+sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
+answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
+guests were all conversing with one another. “The Razumóvskis... It
+was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apráksina...” was heard
+on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.
+
+“Márya Dmítrievna?” came her voice from there.
+
+“Herself,” came the answer in a rough voice, and Márya Dmítrievna
+entered the room.
+
+All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
+oldest rose. Márya Dmítrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
+holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
+surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
+rolling them up. Márya Dmítrievna always spoke in Russian.
+
+“Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her
+children,” she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all
+others. “Well, you old sinner,” she went on, turning to the count
+who was kissing her hand, “you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay?
+Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just
+see how these nestlings are growing up,” and she pointed to the girls.
+“You must look for husbands for them whether you like it or not....”
+
+“Well,” said she, “how’s my Cossack?” (Márya Dmítrievna
+always called Natásha a Cossack) and she stroked the child’s arm as
+she came up fearless and gay to kiss her hand. “I know she’s a scamp
+of a girl, but I like her.”
+
+She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule and,
+having given them to the rosy Natásha, who beamed with the pleasure
+of her saint’s-day fete, turned away at once and addressed herself to
+Pierre.
+
+“Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit,” said she, assuming a soft high
+tone of voice. “Come here, my friend...” and she ominously tucked
+up her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a
+childlike way through his spectacles.
+
+“Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell
+your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it’s my
+evident duty.” She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to
+follow, for this was clearly only a prelude.
+
+“A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed
+and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame,
+sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war.”
+
+She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly keep
+from laughing.
+
+“Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?” said Márya
+Dmítrievna.
+
+The count went in first with Márya Dmítrievna, the countess followed
+on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them because
+Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna Mikháylovna
+with Shinshín. Berg gave his arm to Véra. The smiling Julie Karágina
+went in with Nicholas. After them other couples followed, filling the
+whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors, and governesses
+followed singly. The footmen began moving about, chairs scraped, the
+band struck up in the gallery, and the guests settled down in their
+places. Then the strains of the count’s household band were replaced
+by the clatter of knives and forks, the voices of visitors, and the
+soft steps of the footmen. At one end of the table sat the countess with
+Márya Dmítrievna on her right and Anna Mikháylovna on her left, the
+other lady visitors were farther down. At the other end sat the count,
+with the hussar colonel on his left and Shinshín and the other male
+visitors on his right. Midway down the long table on one side sat the
+grown-up young people: Véra beside Berg, and Pierre beside Borís; and
+on the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses. From behind
+the crystal decanters and fruit vases, the count kept glancing at his
+wife and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and busily filled
+his neighbors’ glasses, not neglecting his own. The countess in turn,
+without omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from
+behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed
+by their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the
+ladies’ end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the
+men’s end the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the
+colonel of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so
+much that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg
+with tender smiles was saying to Véra that love is not an earthly but
+a heavenly feeling. Borís was telling his new friend Pierre who the
+guests were and exchanging glances with Natásha, who was sitting
+opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a
+great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and
+went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the wines.
+These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in a
+napkin, from behind the next man’s shoulders and whispered: “Dry
+Madeira”... “Hungarian”... or “Rhine wine” as the case might
+be. Of the four crystal glasses engraved with the count’s monogram
+that stood before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank
+with enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other
+guests. Natásha, who sat opposite, was looking at Borís as girls of
+thirteen look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for
+the first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny
+lively little girl’s look made him inclined to laugh without knowing
+why.
+
+Nicholas sat at some distance from Sónya, beside Julie Karágina, to
+whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sónya wore
+a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned
+pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas
+and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept looking round
+uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might be put upon the
+children. The German tutor was trying to remember all the dishes, wines,
+and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full description of the dinner
+to his people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended when the butler
+with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned, trying to
+appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was mortified because
+no one would understand that it was not to quench his thirst or from
+greediness that he wanted it, but simply from a conscientious desire for
+knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+At the men’s end of the table the talk grew more and more animated.
+The colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared
+in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day
+been forwarded by courier to the commander in chief.
+
+“And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?” remarked
+Shinshín. “He has stopped Austria’s cackle and I fear it will be
+our turn next.”
+
+The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted to
+the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshín’s remark.
+
+“It is for the reasson, my goot sir,” said he, speaking with a
+German accent, “for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He
+declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze danger
+vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as vell
+as ze sanctity of its alliances...” he spoke this last word with
+particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.
+
+Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he
+repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:
+
+... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor’s sole and absolute
+aim—to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations—has now decided
+him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a new condition
+for the attainment of that purpose.
+
+“Zat, my dear sir, is vy...” he concluded, drinking a tumbler of
+wine with dignity and looking to the count for approval.
+
+“Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* ‘Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but
+turn spindles at home!’?” said Shinshín, puckering his brows and
+smiling. “Cela nous convient à merveille.*(2) Suvórov now—he knew
+what he was about; yet they beat him à plate couture,*(3) and where
+are we to find Suvórovs now? Je vous demande un peu,” *(4) said he,
+continually changing from French to Russian.
+
+     *Do you know the proverb?
+
+     *(2) That suits us down to the ground.
+
+     *(3) Hollow.
+
+     *(4) I just ask you that.
+
+“Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!” said the colonel,
+thumping the table; “and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen all vill
+pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible”... he dwelt
+particularly on the word possible... “as po-o-ossible,” he ended,
+again turning to the count. “Zat is how ve old hussars look at it, and
+zere’s an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a young hussar,
+how do you judge of it?” he added, addressing Nicholas, who when he
+heard that the war was being discussed had turned from his partner with
+eyes and ears intent on the colonel.
+
+“I am quite of your opinion,” replied Nicholas, flaming up, turning
+his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as much decision
+and desperation as though he were at that moment facing some great
+danger. “I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer,” he
+concluded, conscious—as were others—after the words were uttered
+that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for the occasion and
+were therefore awkward.
+
+“What you said just now was splendid!” said his partner Julie.
+
+Sónya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them and
+down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.
+
+Pierre listened to the colonel’s speech and nodded approvingly.
+
+“That’s fine,” said he.
+
+“The young man’s a real hussar!” shouted the colonel, again
+thumping the table.
+
+“What are you making such a noise about over there?” Márya
+Dmítrievna’s deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the
+table. “What are you thumping the table for?” she demanded of the
+hussar, “and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French
+are here?”
+
+“I am speaking ze truce,” replied the hussar with a smile.
+
+“It’s all about the war,” the count shouted down the table. “You
+know my son’s going, Márya Dmítrievna? My son is going.”
+
+“I have four sons in the army but still I don’t fret. It is all
+in God’s hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a
+battle,” replied Márya Dmítrievna’s deep voice, which easily
+carried the whole length of the table.
+
+“That’s true!”
+
+Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies’ at the one end
+and the men’s at the other.
+
+“You won’t ask,” Natásha’s little brother was saying; “I know
+you won’t ask!”
+
+“I will,” replied Natásha.
+
+Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She half
+rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to what
+was coming, and turning to her mother:
+
+“Mamma!” rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,
+audible the whole length of the table.
+
+“What is it?” asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her
+daughter’s face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her
+sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.
+
+The conversation was hushed.
+
+“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” and Natásha’s voice
+sounded still more firm and resolute.
+
+The countess tried to frown, but could not. Márya Dmítrievna shook her
+fat finger.
+
+“Cossack!” she said threateningly.
+
+Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the
+elders.
+
+“You had better take care!” said the countess.
+
+“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” Natásha again cried
+boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in
+good part.
+
+Sónya and fat little Pétya doubled up with laughter.
+
+“You see! I have asked,” whispered Natásha to her little brother
+and to Pierre, glancing at him again.
+
+“Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,” said Márya Dmítrievna.
+
+Natásha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even
+Márya Dmítrievna.
+
+“Márya Dmítrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t like ice
+cream.”
+
+“Carrot ices.”
+
+“No! What kind, Márya Dmítrievna? What kind?” she almost screamed;
+“I want to know!”
+
+Márya Dmítrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the
+guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Márya Dmítrievna’s answer
+but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had
+dared to treat Márya Dmítrievna in this fashion.
+
+Natásha only desisted when she had been told that there would be
+pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band
+again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests, leaving
+their seats, went up to “congratulate” the countess, and reached
+across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the children, and
+with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs scraped, and
+in the same order in which they had entered but with redder faces, the
+guests returned to the drawing room and to the count’s study.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the
+count’s visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms,
+some in the sitting room, some in the library.
+
+The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from
+dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything.
+The young people, at the countess’ instigation, gathered round the
+clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played first. After she
+had played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the
+other young ladies in begging Natásha and Nicholas, who were noted for
+their musical talent, to sing something. Natásha, who was treated as
+though she were grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the
+same time felt shy.
+
+“What shall we sing?” she said.
+
+“‘The Brook,’” suggested Nicholas.
+
+“Well, then, let’s be quick. Borís, come here,” said Natásha.
+“But where is Sónya?”
+
+She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room ran to
+look for her.
+
+Running into Sónya’s room and not finding her there, Natásha ran to
+the nursery, but Sónya was not there either. Natásha concluded that
+she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage was
+the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the Rostóv
+household. And there in fact was Sónya lying face downward on Nurse’s
+dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy pink
+dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and sobbing
+so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook. Natásha’s
+face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint’s day, suddenly
+changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad
+neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.
+
+“Sónya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!” And
+Natásha’s large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she
+began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sónya was
+crying. Sónya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and
+hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natásha wept, sitting on the
+blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort Sónya
+sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.
+
+“Nicholas is going away in a week’s time, his... papers... have
+come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry,” and she
+showed a paper she held in her hand—with the verses Nicholas had
+written, “still, I should not cry, but you can’t... no one can
+understand... what a soul he has!”
+
+And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.
+
+“It’s all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and
+Borís also,” she went on, gaining a little strength; “he is nice...
+there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin...
+one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it
+can’t be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma” (Sónya looked upon
+the countess as her mother and called her so) “that I am spoiling
+Nicholas’ career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God
+is my witness,” and she made the sign of the cross, “I love her so
+much, and all of you, only Véra... And what for? What have I done
+to her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice
+everything, only I have nothing....”
+
+Sónya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in
+the feather bed. Natásha began consoling her, but her face showed that
+she understood all the gravity of her friend’s trouble.
+
+“Sónya,” she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true
+reason of her friend’s sorrow, “I’m sure Véra has said something
+to you since dinner? Hasn’t she?”
+
+“Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some others,
+and she found them on my table and said she’d show them to Mamma, and
+that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him to marry
+me, but that he’ll marry Julie. You see how he’s been with her all
+day... Natásha, what have I done to deserve it?...”
+
+And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natásha lifted
+her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began comforting
+her.
+
+“Sónya, don’t believe her, darling! Don’t believe her! Do you
+remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting
+room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don’t
+quite remember how, but don’t you remember that it could all be
+arranged and how nice it all was? There’s Uncle Shinshín’s brother
+has married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know.
+And Borís says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all about
+it. And he is so clever and so good!” said Natásha. “Don’t
+you cry, Sónya, dear love, darling Sónya!” and she kissed her and
+laughed. “Véra’s spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right
+and she won’t say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself,
+and he doesn’t care at all for Julie.”
+
+Natásha kissed her on the hair.
+
+Sónya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it
+seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin
+playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.
+
+“Do you think so?... Really? Truly?” she said, quickly smoothing her
+frock and hair.
+
+“Really, truly!” answered Natásha, pushing in a crisp lock that had
+strayed from under her friend’s plaits.
+
+Both laughed.
+
+“Well, let’s go and sing ‘The Brook.’”
+
+“Come along!”
+
+“Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!” said
+Natásha, stopping suddenly. “I feel so happy!”
+
+And she set off at a run along the passage.
+
+Sónya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
+verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran
+after Natásha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face
+and light, joyous steps. At the visitors’ request the young people
+sang the quartette, “The Brook,” with which everyone was delighted.
+Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:
+
+   At nighttime in the moon’s fair glow
+     How sweet, as fancies wander free,
+   To feel that in this world there’s one
+     Who still is thinking but of thee!
+
+   That while her fingers touch the harp
+     Wafting sweet music o’er the lea,
+   It is for thee thus swells her heart,
+     Sighing its message out to thee...
+
+   A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,
+     But oh! till then I cannot live!...
+
+He had not finished the last verse before the young people began to
+get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and the
+coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.
+
+
+Pierre was sitting in the drawing room where Shinshín had engaged him,
+as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political conversation in
+which several others joined but which bored Pierre. When the music began
+Natásha came in and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing and
+blushing:
+
+“Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers.”
+
+“I am afraid of mixing the figures,” Pierre replied; “but if you
+will be my teacher...” And lowering his big arm he offered it to the
+slender little girl.
+
+While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning up,
+Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natásha was perfectly happy;
+she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was
+sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady.
+She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had given her to hold.
+Assuming quite the pose of a society woman (heaven knows when and where
+she had learned it) she talked with her partner, fanning herself and
+smiling over the fan.
+
+“Dear, dear! Just look at her!” exclaimed the countess as she
+crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natásha.
+
+Natásha blushed and laughed.
+
+“Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised
+at?”
+
+
+In the midst of the third écossaise there was a clatter of chairs being
+pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Márya Dmítrievna
+had been playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and
+older visitors. They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long,
+and replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First
+came Márya Dmítrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The
+count, with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his
+bent arm to Márya Dmítrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair
+gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last figure of the
+écossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted
+up to their gallery, addressing the first violin:
+
+“Semën! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?”
+
+This was the count’s favorite dance, which he had danced in his youth.
+(Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)
+
+“Look at Papa!” shouted Natásha to the whole company, and quite
+forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her
+curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her laughter.
+
+And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure at the
+jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout partner,
+Márya Dmítrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened his
+shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by
+a smile that broadened his round face more and more, prepared the
+onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively gay
+strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a merry peasant
+dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly
+filled by the domestic serfs—the men on one side and the women on
+the other—who with beaming faces had come to see their master making
+merry.
+
+“Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!” loudly remarked
+the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
+
+The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did not
+want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her powerful arms
+hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the countess), and only her
+stern but handsome face really joined in the dance. What was expressed
+by the whole of the count’s plump figure, in Márya Dmítrievna found
+expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering nose.
+But if the count, getting more and more into the swing of it, charmed
+the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and
+the agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Márya
+Dmítrievna produced no less impression by slight exertions—the least
+effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp
+her foot—which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual
+severity. The dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could
+not attract a moment’s attention to their own evolutions and did not
+even try to do so. All were watching the count and Márya Dmítrievna.
+Natásha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them to
+“look at Papa!” though as it was they never took their eyes off the
+couple. In the intervals of the dance the count, breathing deeply, waved
+and shouted to the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster;
+lightly, more lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying
+round Márya Dmítrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until,
+turning his partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas,
+raising his soft foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling
+and making a wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and
+laughter led by Natásha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily
+and wiping their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
+
+“That’s how we used to dance in our time, ma chère,” said the
+count.
+
+“That was a Daniel Cooper!” exclaimed Márya Dmítrievna, tucking up
+her sleeves and puffing heavily.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+While in the Rostóvs’ ballroom the sixth anglaise was being danced,
+to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired
+footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezúkhov had a
+sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute
+confession, communion was administered to the dying man, preparations
+made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there was the bustle
+and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond
+the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up,
+waited in expectation of an important order for an expensive funeral.
+The Military Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous in sending
+aides-de-camp to inquire after the count’s health, came himself
+that evening to bid a last farewell to the celebrated grandee of
+Catherine’s court, Count Bezúkhov.
+
+The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up
+respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an
+hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their
+bows and trying to escape as quickly as possible from the glances fixed
+on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince
+Vasíli, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,
+escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times in
+low tones.
+
+When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasíli sat down all alone
+on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the other,
+leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his hand. After
+sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened
+eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the long corridor leading
+to the back of the house, to the room of the eldest princess.
+
+Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous
+whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying man’s
+room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy at
+his door, which creaked slightly when opened.
+
+“The limits of human life ... are fixed and may not be
+o’erpassed,” said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat
+beside him and was listening naïvely to his words.
+
+“I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?” asked the
+lady, adding the priest’s clerical title, as if she had no opinion of
+her own on the subject.
+
+“Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament,” replied the priest, passing
+his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his
+bald head.
+
+“Who was that? The Military Governor himself?” was being asked at
+the other side of the room. “How young-looking he is!”
+
+“Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes
+anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction.”
+
+“I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times.”
+
+The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes red
+from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a
+graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a
+table.
+
+“Beautiful,” said the doctor in answer to a remark about the
+weather. “The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow
+one feels as if one were in the country.”
+
+“Yes, indeed,” replied the princess with a sigh. “So he may have
+something to drink?”
+
+Lorrain considered.
+
+“Has he taken his medicine?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The doctor glanced at his watch.
+
+“Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar,”
+and he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.
+
+“Dere has neffer been a gase,” a German doctor was saying to an
+aide-de-camp, “dat one liffs after de sird stroke.”
+
+“And what a well-preserved man he was!” remarked the aide-de-camp.
+“And who will inherit his wealth?” he added in a whisper.
+
+“It von’t go begging,” replied the German with a smile.
+
+Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second
+princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to
+Lorrain’s instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.
+
+“Do you think he can last till morning?” asked the German,
+addressing Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.
+
+Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger before
+his nose.
+
+“Tonight, not later,” said he in a low voice, and he moved away
+with a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to
+understand and state the patient’s condition.
+
+Meanwhile Prince Vasíli had opened the door into the princess’ room.
+
+In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning before
+the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt pastilles.
+The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture, whatnots,
+cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white feather bed was
+just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to bark.
+
+“Ah, is it you, cousin?”
+
+She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely smooth
+that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and covered with
+varnish.
+
+“Has anything happened?” she asked. “I am so terrified.”
+
+“No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about business,
+Catiche,” * muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on the chair
+she had just vacated. “You have made the place warm, I must say,” he
+remarked. “Well, sit down: let’s have a talk.”
+
+     *Catherine.
+
+“I thought perhaps something had happened,” she said with her
+unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the
+prince, she prepared to listen.
+
+“I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can’t.”
+
+“Well, my dear?” said Prince Vasíli, taking her hand and bending it
+downwards as was his habit.
+
+It was plain that this “well?” referred to much that they both
+understood without naming.
+
+The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for her
+legs, looked directly at Prince Vasíli with no sign of emotion in her
+prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up at the icons
+with a sigh. This might have been taken as an expression of sorrow
+and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting before long. Prince
+Vasíli understood it as an expression of weariness.
+
+“And I?” he said; “do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn
+out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a
+very serious talk.”
+
+Prince Vasíli said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously,
+now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant
+expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes
+too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly and at the
+next glanced round in alarm.
+
+The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony
+hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasíli’s eyes evidently
+resolved not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till
+morning.
+
+“Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semënovna,”
+continued Prince Vasíli, returning to his theme, apparently not
+without an inner struggle; “at such a moment as this one must think
+of everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love you
+all, like children of my own, as you know.”
+
+The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the same
+dull expression.
+
+“And then of course my family has also to be considered,” Prince
+Vasíli went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at
+her. “You know, Catiche, that we—you three sisters, Mámontov, and
+my wife—are the count’s only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard
+it is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for
+me; but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for
+anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count,” pointing to
+his portrait, “definitely demanded that he should be called.”
+
+Prince Vasíli looked questioningly at the princess, but could not make
+out whether she was considering what he had just said or whether she was
+simply looking at him.
+
+“There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin,” she
+replied, “and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow
+his noble soul peacefully to leave this...”
+
+“Yes, yes, of course,” interrupted Prince Vasíli impatiently,
+rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little
+table that he had pushed away. “But... in short, the fact is... you
+know yourself that last winter the count made a will by which he left
+all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre.”
+
+“He has made wills enough!” quietly remarked the princess. “But he
+cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate.”
+
+“But, my dear,” said Prince Vasíli suddenly, clutching the little
+table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: “what if
+a letter has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for
+Pierre’s legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of the
+count’s services, his request would be granted?...”
+
+The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about the
+subject under discussion than those they are talking with.
+
+“I can tell you more,” continued Prince Vasíli, seizing her hand,
+“that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew
+of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, then
+as soon as all is over,” and Prince Vasíli sighed to intimate what he
+meant by the words all is over, “and the count’s papers are opened,
+the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and the petition
+will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything as the legitimate
+son.”
+
+“And our share?” asked the princess smiling ironically, as if
+anything might happen, only not that.
+
+“But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be the
+legal heir to everything and you won’t get anything. You must know,
+my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether they have
+been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been overlooked, you
+ought to know where they are, and must find them, because...”
+
+“What next?” the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and not
+changing the expression of her eyes. “I am a woman, and you think we
+are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot inherit...
+un bâtard!”* she added, as if supposing that this translation of the
+word would effectively prove to Prince Vasíli the invalidity of his
+contention.
+
+     * A bastard.
+
+“Well, really, Catiche! Can’t you understand! You are so
+intelligent, how is it you don’t see that if the count has written a
+letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate, it
+follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count Bezúkhov,
+and will then inherit everything under the will? And if the will and
+letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing but the consolation
+of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s’ensuit!* That’s certain.”
+
+     * And all that follows therefrom.
+
+“I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid;
+and you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool,” said the
+princess with the expression women assume when they suppose they are
+saying something witty and stinging.
+
+“My dear Princess Catherine Semënovna,” began Prince Vasíli
+impatiently, “I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about
+your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I
+tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and the
+will in Pierre’s favor are among the count’s papers, then, my dear
+girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don’t believe me,
+then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmítri Onúfrich”
+(the family solicitor) “and he says the same.”
+
+At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess’ ideas;
+her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her voice
+when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she herself
+evidently did not expect.
+
+“That would be a fine thing!” said she. “I never wanted anything
+and I don’t now.”
+
+She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.
+
+“And this is gratitude—this is recognition for those who have
+sacrificed everything for his sake!” she cried. “It’s splendid!
+Fine! I don’t want anything, Prince.”
+
+“Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters...”
+replied Prince Vasíli.
+
+But the princess did not listen to him.
+
+“Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could expect
+nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and ingratitude—the
+blackest ingratitude—in this house...”
+
+“Do you or do you not know where that will is?” insisted Prince
+Vasíli, his cheeks twitching more than ever.
+
+“Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and
+sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has
+been intriguing!”
+
+The princess wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand. She
+had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole human race.
+She gave her companion an angry glance.
+
+“There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it was
+all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was afterwards
+forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to ease his
+last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and not to let
+him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who...”
+
+“Who sacrificed everything for him,” chimed in the princess, who
+would again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, “though
+he never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin,” she added with a sigh,
+“I shall always remember that in this world one must expect no reward,
+that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this world one
+has to be cunning and cruel.”
+
+“Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart.”
+
+“No, I have a wicked heart.”
+
+“I know your heart,” repeated the prince. “I value your friendship
+and wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don’t upset yourself,
+and let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or be it
+but an hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above all where
+it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to the
+count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it.
+You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his
+wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help him
+and you.”
+
+“Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing—I know!” cried
+the princess.
+
+“That’s not the point, my dear.”
+
+“It’s that protégé of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskáya,
+that Anna Mikháylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the
+infamous, vile woman!”
+
+“Do not let us lose any time...”
+
+“Ah, don’t talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here and
+told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us, especially about
+Sophie—I can’t repeat them—that it made the count quite ill and he
+would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was then he wrote this
+vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was invalid.”
+
+“We’ve got to it at last—why did you not tell me about it
+sooner?”
+
+“It’s in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,”
+said the princess, ignoring his question. “Now I know! Yes; if I have
+a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!” almost shrieked
+the princess, now quite changed. “And what does she come worming
+herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind. The time
+will come!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+While these conversations were going on in the reception room and the
+princess’ room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent for)
+and Anna Mikháylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him) was
+driving into the court of Count Bezúkhov’s house. As the wheels
+rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikháylovna,
+having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that
+he was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre
+followed Anna Mikháylovna out of the carriage, and only then began
+to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him. He
+noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the back
+door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two men, who
+looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and hid in the
+shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed several other
+men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house on both sides.
+But neither Anna Mikháylovna nor the footman nor the coachman, who
+could not help seeing these people, took any notice of them. “It seems
+to be all right,” Pierre concluded, and followed Anna Mikháylovna.
+She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone staircase, calling to
+Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why it
+was necessary for him to go to the count at all, still less why he had
+to go by the back stairs, yet judging by Anna Mikháylovna’s air
+of assurance and haste, Pierre concluded that it was all absolutely
+necessary. Halfway up the stairs they were almost knocked over by
+some men who, carrying pails, came running downstairs, their boots
+clattering. These men pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna
+Mikháylovna pass and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them
+there.
+
+“Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?” asked Anna
+Mikháylovna of one of them.
+
+“Yes,” replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were
+now permissible; “the door to the left, ma’am.”
+
+“Perhaps the count did not ask for me,” said Pierre when he reached
+the landing. “I’d better go to my own room.”
+
+Anna Mikháylovna paused and waited for him to come up.
+
+“Ah, my friend!” she said, touching his arm as she had done her
+son’s when speaking to him that afternoon, “believe me I suffer no
+less than you do, but be a man!”
+
+“But really, hadn’t I better go away?” he asked, looking kindly at
+her over his spectacles.
+
+“Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done you.
+Think that he is your father ... perhaps in the agony of death.” She
+sighed. “I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust yourself to
+me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests.”
+
+Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this had
+to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikháylovna who was
+already opening a door.
+
+This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the
+princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been
+in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of
+these rooms. Anna Mikháylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past
+with a decanter on a tray as “my dear” and “my sweet,” asked
+about the princess’ health and then led Pierre along a stone passage.
+The first door on the left led into the princesses’ apartments. The
+maid with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything
+in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna
+Mikháylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where
+Prince Vasíli and the eldest princess were sitting close together
+talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasíli drew back with obvious
+impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of
+desperation slammed the door with all her might.
+
+This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear depicted on
+Prince Vasíli’s face so out of keeping with his dignity that Pierre
+stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Anna
+Mikháylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly and sighed, as
+if to say that this was no more than she had expected.
+
+“Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests,” said she in
+reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.
+
+Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what
+“watching over his interests” meant, but he decided that all these
+things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly
+lit room adjoining the count’s reception room. It was one of those
+sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front
+approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and water
+had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a censer
+and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them. They
+went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian
+windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full
+length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still
+sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one
+another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn Anna
+Mikháylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre who,
+hanging his head, meekly followed her.
+
+Anna Mikháylovna’s face expressed a consciousness that the decisive
+moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg lady she now,
+keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even more boldly than
+that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her the person the
+dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured. Casting a rapid
+glance at all those in the room and noticing the count’s confessor
+there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble, not exactly bowing yet
+seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and respectfully received the blessing
+first of one and then of another priest.
+
+“God be thanked that you are in time,” said she to one of the
+priests; “all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young
+man is the count’s son,” she added more softly. “What a terrible
+moment!”
+
+Having said this she went up to the doctor.
+
+“Dear doctor,” said she, “this young man is the count’s son. Is
+there any hope?”
+
+The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his
+shoulders. Anna Mikháylovna with just the same movement raised her
+shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved away
+from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful and
+tenderly sad voice, she said:
+
+“Trust in His mercy!” and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit
+and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone was
+watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind it.
+
+Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly, moved
+toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikháylovna had
+disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned to him
+with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they
+whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him with a kind
+of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had never before
+received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had been talking to
+the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an aide-de-camp picked up
+and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the doctors became respectfully
+silent as he passed by, and moved to make way for him. At first Pierre
+wished to take another seat so as not to trouble the lady, and also to
+pick up the glove himself and to pass round the doctors who were not
+even in his way; but all at once he felt that this would not do, and
+that tonight he was a person obliged to perform some sort of awful
+rite which everyone expected of him, and that he was therefore bound
+to accept their services. He took the glove in silence from the
+aide-de-camp, and sat down in the lady’s chair, placing his huge hands
+symmetrically on his knees in the naïve attitude of an Egyptian statue,
+and decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in
+order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on his
+own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the will of
+those who were guiding him.
+
+Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasíli with head erect
+majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three
+stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the morning;
+his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and noticed
+Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never used to do),
+and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain whether it was firmly
+fixed on.
+
+“Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is
+well!” and he turned to go.
+
+But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: “How is...” and hesitated,
+not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man “the
+count,” yet ashamed to call him “father.”
+
+“He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my
+friend...”
+
+Pierre’s mind was in such a confused state that the word “stroke”
+suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasíli
+in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
+illness. Prince Vasíli said something to Lorrain in passing and went
+through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
+whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him, and
+the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the door.
+Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, and
+at last Anna Mikháylovna, still with the same expression, pale but
+resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly
+on the arm said:
+
+“The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be
+administered. Come.”
+
+Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed
+that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all
+followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission to
+enter that room.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its
+walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the
+columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and
+on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly illuminated
+with red light like a Russian church during evening service. Under
+the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in that chair
+on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed, Pierre
+saw—covered to the waist by a bright green quilt—the familiar,
+majestic figure of his father, Count Bezúkhov, with that gray mane of
+hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a lion, and the deep
+characteristically noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He lay
+just under the icons; his large thick hands outside the quilt. Into the
+right hand, which was lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been thrust
+between forefinger and thumb, and an old servant, bending over from
+behind the chair, held it in position. By the chair stood the priests,
+their long hair falling over their magnificent glittering vestments,
+with lighted tapers in their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the
+service. A little behind them stood the two younger princesses holding
+handkerchiefs to their eyes, and just in front of them their eldest
+sister, Catiche, with a vicious and determined look steadily fixed on
+the icons, as though declaring to all that she could not answer for
+herself should she glance round. Anna Mikháylovna, with a meek,
+sorrowful, and all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door
+near the strange lady. Prince Vasíli in front of the door, near the
+invalid chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on
+the carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose,
+and was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward
+each time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety
+and resignation to the will of God. “If you do not understand these
+sentiments,” he seemed to be saying, “so much the worse for you!”
+
+Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;
+the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently crossing
+themselves, and the reading of the church service, the subdued chanting
+of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and the shuffling of
+feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna Mikháylovna, with
+an air of importance that showed that she felt she quite knew what she
+was about, went across the room to where Pierre was standing and gave
+him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by observing those around him,
+began crossing himself with the hand that held the taper.
+
+Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the mole,
+watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and remained
+with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing Pierre she
+again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look at him
+without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be out of
+temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In the midst
+of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased, they whispered
+to one another, and the old servant who was holding the count’s hand
+got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikháylovna stepped
+forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to Lorrain from
+behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he was leaning
+against one of the columns in a respectful attitude implying that he,
+a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith, understood the full
+importance of the rite now being performed and even approved of it. He
+now approached the sick man with the noiseless step of one in full vigor
+of life, with his delicate white fingers raised from the green quilt the
+hand that was free, and turning sideways felt the pulse and reflected
+a moment. The sick man was given something to drink, there was a
+stir around him, then the people resumed their places and the service
+continued. During this interval Pierre noticed that Prince Vasíli
+left the chair on which he had been leaning, and—with an air
+which intimated that he knew what he was about and if others did not
+understand him it was so much the worse for them—did not go up to the
+dying man, but passed by him, joined the eldest princess, and moved
+with her to the side of the room where stood the high bedstead with its
+silken hangings. On leaving the bed both Prince Vasíli and the princess
+passed out by a back door, but returned to their places one after the
+other before the service was concluded. Pierre paid no more attention
+to this occurrence than to the rest of what went on, having made up his
+mind once for all that what he saw happening around him that evening was
+in some way essential.
+
+The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest was
+heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received the
+sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as before. Around
+him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and whispers, among which
+Anna Mikháylovna’s was the most distinct.
+
+Pierre heard her say:
+
+“Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be
+impossible...”
+
+The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and servants
+that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with its gray
+mane—which, though he saw other faces as well, he had not lost sight
+of for a single moment during the whole service. He judged by the
+cautious movements of those who crowded round the invalid chair that
+they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.
+
+“Catch hold of my arm or you’ll drop him!” he heard one of the
+servants say in a frightened whisper. “Catch hold from underneath.
+Here!” exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the
+bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the
+weight they were carrying were too much for them.
+
+As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikháylovna, passed the young man
+he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the dying
+man’s high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised by
+those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his gray, curly,
+leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow and cheekbones,
+its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic expression, was
+not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the same as Pierre
+remembered it three months before, when the count had sent him to
+Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly with the uneven
+movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze fixed itself upon
+nothing.
+
+After a few minutes’ bustle beside the high bedstead, those who had
+carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikháylovna touched Pierre’s
+hand and said, “Come.” Pierre went with her to the bed on which the
+sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony
+just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the pillows. His
+hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk quilt, the palms
+downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing straight at him, but
+with a look the significance of which could not be understood by mortal
+man. Either this look meant nothing but that as long as one has eyes
+they must look somewhere, or it meant too much. Pierre hesitated,
+not knowing what to do, and glanced inquiringly at his guide. Anna
+Mikháylovna made a hurried sign with her eyes, glancing at the sick
+man’s hand and moving her lips as if to send it a kiss. Pierre,
+carefully stretching his neck so as not to touch the quilt, followed her
+suggestion and pressed his lips to the large boned, fleshy hand. Neither
+the hand nor a single muscle of the count’s face stirred. Once more
+Pierre looked questioningly at Anna Mikháylovna to see what he was to
+do next. Anna Mikháylovna with her eyes indicated a chair that stood
+beside the bed. Pierre obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were
+doing right. Anna Mikháylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell
+into the naïvely symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently
+distressed that his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing
+his utmost to look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who
+still gazed at the spot where Pierre’s face had been before he sat
+down. Anna Mikháylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of
+the pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the
+father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre seemed an
+hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count’s face began
+to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth was drawn to one
+side (only now did Pierre realize how near death his father was), and
+from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Anna
+Mikháylovna looked attentively at the sick man’s eyes, trying to
+guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre, then to some drink,
+then named Prince Vasíli in an inquiring whisper, then pointed to the
+quilt. The eyes and face of the sick man showed impatience. He made an
+effort to look at the servant who stood constantly at the head of the
+bed.
+
+“Wants to turn on the other side,” whispered the servant, and got up
+to turn the count’s heavy body toward the wall.
+
+Pierre rose to help him.
+
+While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back
+helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward. Whether he
+noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded that lifeless arm,
+or whether some other thought flitted across his dying brain, at any
+rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre’s terror-stricken
+face, and again at the arm, and on his face a feeble, piteous smile
+appeared, quite out of keeping with his features, that seemed to deride
+his own helplessness. At sight of this smile Pierre felt an unexpected
+quivering in his breast and a tickling in his nose, and tears dimmed his
+eyes. The sick man was turned on to his side with his face to the wall.
+He sighed.
+
+“He is dozing,” said Anna Mikháylovna, observing that one of the
+princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. “Let us go.”
+
+Pierre went out.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasíli and the
+eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of Catherine the
+Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre and his companion
+they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the princess hide
+something as she whispered:
+
+“I can’t bear the sight of that woman.”
+
+“Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room,” said Prince
+Vasíli to Anna Mikháylovna. “Go and take something, my poor Anna
+Mikháylovna, or you will not hold out.”
+
+To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze
+below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikháylovna into the small
+drawing room.
+
+“There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup
+of this delicious Russian tea,” Lorrain was saying with an air of
+restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese
+handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid
+in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count
+Bezúkhov’s house that night had gathered to fortify themselves.
+Pierre well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors
+and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not
+know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the ladies
+who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds and
+pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the brilliantly
+lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several times. Now
+this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one small table tea
+things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the middle of the
+night a motley throng of people sat there, not merrymaking, but somberly
+whispering, and betraying by every word and movement that they none
+of them forgot what was happening and what was about to happen in the
+bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though he would very much have
+liked to. He looked inquiringly at his monitress and saw that she was
+again going on tiptoe to the reception room where they had left Prince
+Vasíli and the eldest princess. Pierre concluded that this also was
+essential, and after a short interval followed her. Anna Mikháylovna
+was standing beside the princess, and they were both speaking in excited
+whispers.
+
+“Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not
+necessary,” said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the
+same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.
+
+“But, my dear princess,” answered Anna Mikháylovna blandly but
+impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other
+from passing, “won’t this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment
+when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is
+already prepared...”
+
+Prince Vasíli was seated in an easy chair in his familiar attitude,
+with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which were so
+flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching violently; but
+he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the two ladies were
+saying.
+
+“Come, my dear Anna Mikháylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases. You
+know how fond the count is of her.”
+
+“I don’t even know what is in this paper,” said the younger of
+the two ladies, addressing Prince Vasíli and pointing to an inlaid
+portfolio she held in her hand. “All I know is that his real will is
+in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten....”
+
+She tried to pass Anna Mikháylovna, but the latter sprang so as to bar
+her path.
+
+“I know, my dear, kind princess,” said Anna Mikháylovna, seizing
+the portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.
+“Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je vous
+en conjure...”
+
+The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the
+portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if
+the princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna
+Mikháylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost none
+of its honeyed firmness and softness.
+
+“Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place in a
+family consultation; is it not so, Prince?”
+
+“Why don’t you speak, cousin?” suddenly shrieked the princess so
+loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. “Why
+do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to
+interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man’s room?
+Intriguer!” she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the
+portfolio.
+
+But Anna Mikháylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold on the
+portfolio, and changed her grip.
+
+Prince Vasíli rose. “Oh!” said he with reproach and surprise,
+“this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you.”
+
+The princess let go.
+
+“And you too!”
+
+But Anna Mikháylovna did not obey him.
+
+“Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will go
+and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?”
+
+“But, Prince,” said Anna Mikháylovna, “after such a solemn
+sacrament, allow him a moment’s peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your
+opinion,” said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite
+close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the princess
+which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Prince
+Vasíli.
+
+“Remember that you will answer for the consequences,” said Prince
+Vasíli severely. “You don’t know what you are doing.”
+
+“Vile woman!” shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
+Mikháylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.
+
+Prince Vasíli bent his head and spread out his hands.
+
+At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so long
+and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and banged
+against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed out
+wringing her hands.
+
+“What are you doing!” she cried vehemently. “He is dying and you
+leave me alone with him!”
+
+Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikháylovna, stooping, quickly
+caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. The eldest
+princess and Prince Vasíli, recovering themselves, followed her. A few
+minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard face, again
+biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression showed an
+irrepressible hatred.
+
+“Yes, now you may be glad!” said she; “this is what you have
+been waiting for.” And bursting into tears she hid her face in her
+handkerchief and rushed from the room.
+
+Prince Vasíli came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was
+sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre
+noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in an
+ague.
+
+“Ah, my friend!” said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there was
+in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in it
+before. “How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am
+near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all! Death is
+awful...” and he burst into tears.
+
+Anna Mikháylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow, quiet
+steps.
+
+“Pierre!” she said.
+
+Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his
+forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:
+
+“He is no more....”
+
+Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
+
+“Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
+tears.”
+
+She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one could
+see his face. Anna Mikháylovna left him, and when she returned he was
+fast asleep with his head on his arm.
+
+In the morning Anna Mikháylovna said to Pierre:
+
+“Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.
+But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in command
+of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I know you
+well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but it imposes
+duties on you, and you must be a man.”
+
+Pierre was silent.
+
+“Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not been
+there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle promised
+me only the day before yesterday not to forget Borís. But he had
+no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your father’s
+wish?”
+
+Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
+silence at Princess Anna Mikháylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
+Mikháylovna returned to the Rostóvs’ and went to bed. On waking in
+the morning she told the Rostóvs and all her acquaintances the details
+of Count Bezúkhov’s death. She said the count had died as she would
+herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but edifying. As
+to the last meeting between father and son, it was so touching that she
+could not think of it without tears, and did not know which had behaved
+better during those awful moments—the father who so remembered
+everything and everybody at last and had spoken such pathetic words to
+the son, or Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see, so stricken was he
+with grief, though he tried hard to hide it in order not to sadden his
+dying father. “It is painful, but it does one good. It uplifts the
+soul to see such men as the old count and his worthy son,” said she.
+Of the behavior of the eldest princess and Prince Vasíli she spoke
+disapprovingly, but in whispers and as a great secret.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andréevich Bolkónski’s estate, the
+arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
+this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the old
+prince’s household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andréevich
+(nicknamed in society, “the King of Prussia”) ever since the Emperor
+Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
+with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
+Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
+capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
+anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow to
+Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to
+say that there are only two sources of human vice—idleness and
+superstition, and only two virtues—activity and intelligence. He
+himself undertook his daughter’s education, and to develop these two
+cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry
+till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was
+occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving
+problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working
+in the garden, or superintending the building that was always going on
+at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating activity,
+regularity in his household was carried to the highest point of
+exactitude. He always came to table under precisely the same conditions,
+and not only at the same hour but at the same minute. With those about
+him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was sharp and invariably
+exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he inspired such fear
+and respect as few hardhearted men would have aroused. Although he was
+in retirement and had now no influence in political affairs, every high
+official appointed to the province in which the prince’s estate lay
+considered it his duty to visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber
+just as the architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince
+appeared punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this
+antechamber experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when
+the enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather
+small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray
+eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his shrewd,
+youthfully glittering eyes.
+
+On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive, Princess
+Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed for the
+morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and repeating a
+silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and every morning
+prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.
+
+An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose
+quietly and said in a whisper: “Please walk in.”
+
+Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess timidly
+opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused at the
+entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after glancing round
+continued his work.
+
+The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use.
+The large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted
+bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while
+standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with
+tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around—all indicated
+continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot
+shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure
+of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince still possessed the
+tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a few more turns
+of the lathe he removed his foot from the pedal, wiped his chisel,
+dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching
+the table, summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a blessing,
+so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding
+her tenderly and attentively, said severely:
+
+“Quite well? All right then, sit down.” He took the exercise book
+containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a chair
+with his foot.
+
+“For tomorrow!” said he, quickly finding the page and making a
+scratch from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.
+
+The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.
+
+“Wait a bit, here’s a letter for you,” said the old man suddenly,
+taking a letter addressed in a woman’s hand from a bag hanging above
+the table, onto which he threw it.
+
+At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the
+princess’ face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.
+
+“From Héloïse?” asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his
+still sound, yellowish teeth.
+
+“Yes, it’s from Julie,” replied the princess with a timid glance
+and a timid smile.
+
+“I’ll let two more letters pass, but the third I’ll read,” said
+the prince sternly; “I’m afraid you write much nonsense. I’ll read
+the third!”
+
+“Read this if you like, Father,” said the princess, blushing still
+more and holding out the letter.
+
+“The third, I said the third!” cried the prince abruptly, pushing
+the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward him
+the exercise book containing geometrical figures.
+
+“Well, madam,” he began, stooping over the book close to his
+daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat,
+so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of
+old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. “Now, madam, these
+triangles are equal; please note that the angle ABC...”
+
+The princess looked in a scared way at her father’s eyes glittering
+close to her; the red patches on her face came and went, and it was
+plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened that her
+fear would prevent her understanding any of her father’s further
+explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was the
+teacher’s fault or the pupil’s, this same thing happened every day:
+the princess’ eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear
+anything, but was only conscious of her stern father’s withered face
+close to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only
+of how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the problem in
+peace. The old man was beside himself: moved the chair on which he was
+sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to control himself
+and not become vehement, but almost always did become vehement, scolded,
+and sometimes flung the exercise book away.
+
+The princess gave a wrong answer.
+
+“Well now, isn’t she a fool!” shouted the prince, pushing the book
+aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up and
+down, lightly touched his daughter’s hair and sat down again.
+
+He drew up his chair, and continued to explain.
+
+“This won’t do, Princess; it won’t do,” said he, when Princess
+Mary, having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day’s
+lesson, was about to leave: “Mathematics are most important, madam!
+I don’t want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and
+you’ll like it,” and he patted her cheek. “It will drive all the
+nonsense out of your head.”
+
+She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an uncut
+book from the high desk.
+
+“Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Héloïse has
+sent you. Religious! I don’t interfere with anyone’s belief... I
+have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go.”
+
+He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.
+
+Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared expression that
+rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly face yet plainer. She
+sat down at her writing table, on which stood miniature portraits and
+which was littered with books and papers. The princess was as untidy as
+her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book and eagerly broke
+the seal of her letter. It was from her most intimate friend from
+childhood; that same Julie Karágina who had been at the Rostóvs’
+name-day party.
+
+Julie wrote in French:
+
+Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is
+separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my happiness
+are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance separating us
+our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart rebels against
+fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions around me I cannot
+overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in my heart ever since
+we parted. Why are we not together as we were last summer, in your big
+study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa? Why cannot I now, as
+three months ago, draw fresh moral strength from your look, so gentle,
+calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so well and seem to see before me
+as I write?
+
+Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the mirror
+which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and
+thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular hopelessness
+at her reflection in the glass. “She flatters me,” thought the
+princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie did not flatter
+her friend, the princess’ eyes—large, deep and luminous (it seemed
+as if at times there radiated from them shafts of warm light)—were
+so beautiful that very often in spite of the plainness of her face
+they gave her an attraction more powerful than that of beauty. But the
+princess never saw the beautiful expression of her own eyes—the look
+they had when she was not thinking of herself. As with everyone, her
+face assumed a forced unnatural expression as soon as she looked in a
+glass. She went on reading:
+
+All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is already
+abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on their march
+to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg and it is thought
+intends to expose his precious person to the chances of war. God grant
+that the Corsican monster who is destroying the peace of Europe may
+be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the Almighty, in His
+goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing of my brothers, this
+war has deprived me of one of the associations nearest my heart. I mean
+young Nicholas Rostóv, who with his enthusiasm could not bear to remain
+inactive and has left the university to join the army. I will confess to
+you, dear Mary, that in spite of his extreme youth his departure for
+the army was a great grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you
+last summer, is so noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which
+one seldom finds nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly,
+he is so frank and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that
+my relations with him, transient as they were, have been one of the
+sweetest comforts to my poor heart, which has already suffered so much.
+Someday I will tell you about our parting and all that was said then.
+That is still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know
+these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are
+generally the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too
+young ever to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship,
+this poetic and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of
+this! The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of
+old Count Bezúkhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses
+have received very little, Prince Vasíli nothing, and it is Monsieur
+Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been
+recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezúkhov and
+possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince
+Vasíli played a very despicable part in this affair and that he
+returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.
+
+I confess I understand very little about all these matters of wills and
+inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom we all used
+to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count Bezúkhov and the
+owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to
+watch the change in the tone and manners of the mammas burdened by
+marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies themselves, toward
+him, though, between you and me, he always seemed to me a poor sort
+of fellow. As for the past two years people have amused themselves
+by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don’t even know), the
+matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as the future Countess
+Bezúkhova. But you will understand that I have no desire for the post.
+À propos of marriages: do you know that a while ago that universal
+auntie Anna Mikháylovna told me, under the seal of strict secrecy, of
+a plan of marriage for you. It is neither more nor less than with Prince
+Vasíli’s son Anatole, whom they wish to reform by marrying him to
+someone rich and distinguée, and it is on you that his relations’
+choice has fallen. I don’t know what you will think of it, but
+I consider it my duty to let you know of it. He is said to be very
+handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is all I have been able to find
+out about him.
+
+But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper, and
+Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apráksins’. Read the
+mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here. Though
+there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to grasp, it
+is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul. Adieu! Give
+my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments to Mademoiselle
+Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.
+
+JULIE
+
+P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.
+
+The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her luminous
+eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then she suddenly
+rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She took a sheet of
+paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is the reply she wrote,
+also in French:
+
+Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great
+delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which
+you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual effect
+on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say, if I
+dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? Ah, if
+we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why do you
+suppose that I should look severely on your affection for that young
+man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I understand such
+feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve of
+them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian
+love, love of one’s neighbor, love of one’s enemy, is worthier,
+sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful eyes of a
+young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl like yourself.
+
+The news of Count Bezúkhov’s death reached us before your letter
+and my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last
+representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own
+turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as late as
+possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!
+
+I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He always
+seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the quality I value
+most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played by Prince
+Vasíli, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine
+Saviour’s words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the
+eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are
+terribly true. I pity Prince Vasíli but am still more sorry for Pierre.
+So young, and burdened with such riches—to what temptations he will be
+exposed! If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be
+poorer than the poorest beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the
+volume you have sent me and which has such success in Moscow. Yet since
+you tell me that among some good things it contains others which our
+weak human understanding cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to
+spend time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear
+no fruit. I never could understand the fondness some people have for
+confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken
+their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for
+exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read
+the Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries
+they contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the
+terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh
+which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us
+rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which our
+divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to
+conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less
+we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God, who
+rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we seek
+to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will
+He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.
+
+My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me that he
+has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasíli. In
+regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you, dear sweet
+friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution to which we must
+conform. However painful it may be to me, should the Almighty lay
+the duties of wife and mother upon me I shall try to perform them as
+faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by examining my feelings
+toward him whom He may give me for husband.
+
+I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy arrival
+at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief one,
+however, for he will leave us again to take part in this unhappy war
+into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only where you
+are—at the heart of affairs and of the world—is the talk all of
+war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature—which townsfolk
+consider characteristic of the country—rumors of war are heard
+and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
+countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day
+before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I witnessed a
+heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled from our
+people and starting to join the army. You should have seen the state of
+the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should
+have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the
+laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of
+injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing
+one another.
+
+Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most Holy
+Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!
+
+MARY
+
+“Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already dispatched
+mine. I have written to my poor mother,” said the smiling Mademoiselle
+Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r’s.
+She brought into Princess Mary’s strenuous, mournful, and gloomy
+world a quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and
+self-satisfied.
+
+“Princess, I must warn you,” she added, lowering her voice and
+evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with
+exaggerated grasseyement, “the prince has been scolding Michael
+Ivánovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared.”
+
+“Ah, dear friend,” replied Princess Mary, “I have asked you never
+to warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge
+him and would not have others do so.”
+
+The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five minutes
+late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting
+room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o’clock, as the
+day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played the
+clavichord.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of
+the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house
+through the closed doors came the sound of difficult passages—twenty
+times repeated—of a sonata by Dussek.
+
+Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to the
+porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to
+alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old Tíkhon, wearing
+a wig, put his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in
+a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the door.
+Tíkhon knew that neither the son’s arrival nor any other unusual
+event must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Prince
+Andrew apparently knew this as well as Tíkhon; he looked at his watch
+as if to ascertain whether his father’s habits had changed since he
+was at home last, and, having assured himself that they had not, he
+turned to his wife.
+
+“He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary’s
+room,” he said.
+
+The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes
+and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak just as
+merrily and prettily as ever.
+
+“Why, this is a palace!” she said to her husband, looking around
+with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball.
+“Let’s come, quick, quick!” And with a glance round, she smiled at
+Tíkhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.
+
+“Is that Mary practicing? Let’s go quietly and take her by
+surprise.”
+
+Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.
+
+“You’ve grown older, Tíkhon,” he said in passing to the old man,
+who kissed his hand.
+
+Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord
+came, the pretty, fair-haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
+rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.
+
+“Ah! what joy for the princess!” exclaimed she: “At last! I must
+let her know.”
+
+“No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne,” said
+the little princess, kissing her. “I know you already through my
+sister-in-law’s friendship for you. She was not expecting us?”
+
+They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound
+of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped and
+made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.
+
+The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the
+middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary’s heavy tread and the
+sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who
+had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in
+each other’s arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they
+happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her
+hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready to
+cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as
+lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two women let go
+of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each
+other’s hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began
+kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew’s surprise
+both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle Bourienne also began to
+cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at ease, but to the two women
+it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and apparently it never
+entered their heads that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.
+
+“Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!...” they suddenly exclaimed, and then
+laughed. “I dreamed last night...”—“You were not expecting
+us?...” “Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?...” “And you have grown
+stouter!...”
+
+“I knew the princess at once,” put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
+
+“And I had no idea!...” exclaimed Princess Mary. “Ah, Andrew, I
+did not see you.”
+
+Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, and
+he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess Mary had
+turned toward her brother, and through her tears the loving, warm,
+gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment,
+rested on Prince Andrew’s face.
+
+The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip
+continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary
+and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of
+glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had
+had on the Spásski Hill which might have been serious for her in her
+condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had left
+all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would have
+to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that Kitty
+Odýntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor for Mary,
+a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess Mary was
+still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were full
+of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following a train of
+thought independent of her sister-in-law’s words. In the midst of a
+description of the last Petersburg fete she addressed her brother:
+
+“So you are really going to the war, Andrew?” she said sighing.
+
+Lise sighed too.
+
+“Yes, and even tomorrow,” replied her brother.
+
+“He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
+promotion...”
+
+Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of
+thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her figure.
+
+“Is it certain?” she said.
+
+The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said: “Yes,
+quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful...”
+
+Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law’s
+and unexpectedly again began to cry.
+
+“She needs rest,” said Prince Andrew with a frown. “Don’t you,
+Lise? Take her to your room and I’ll go to Father. How is he? Just the
+same?”
+
+“Yes, just the same. Though I don’t know what your opinion will
+be,” answered the princess joyfully.
+
+“And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the
+lathe?” asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which
+showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he was
+aware of his weaknesses.
+
+“The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and
+my geometry lessons,” said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her lessons
+in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.
+
+When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the old
+prince to get up, Tíkhon came to call the young prince to his father.
+The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor of his
+son’s arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments while
+he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-fashioned
+style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when Prince Andrew
+entered his father’s dressing room (not with the contemptuous look and
+manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated face with which
+he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large leather-covered
+chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to Tíkhon.
+
+“Ah! here’s the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?” said the
+old man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tíkhon
+was holding fast to plait, would allow.
+
+“You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like
+this he’ll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?” And he
+held out his cheek.
+
+The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He
+used to say that a nap “after dinner was silver—before dinner,
+golden.”) He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his
+thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father on
+the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father’s favorite
+topic—making fun of the military men of the day, and more particularly
+of Bonaparte.
+
+“Yes, Father, I have come to you and brought my wife who is
+pregnant,” said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his
+father’s face with an eager and respectful look. “How is your
+health?”
+
+“Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from
+morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well.”
+
+“Thank God,” said his son smiling.
+
+“God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on,” he continued,
+returning to his hobby; “tell me how the Germans have taught you to
+fight Bonaparte by this new science you call ‘strategy.’”
+
+Prince Andrew smiled.
+
+“Give me time to collect my wits, Father,” said he, with a smile
+that showed that his father’s foibles did not prevent his son from
+loving and honoring him. “Why, I have not yet had time to settle
+down!”
+
+“Nonsense, nonsense!” cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to
+see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand. “The
+house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there and
+show her over, and they’ll talk nineteen to the dozen. That’s
+their woman’s way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About
+Mikhelson’s army I understand—Tolstóy’s too... a simultaneous
+expedition.... But what’s the southern army to do? Prussia is
+neutral... I know that. What about Austria?” said he, rising from his
+chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Tíkhon, who ran after
+him, handing him different articles of clothing. “What of Sweden? How
+will they cross Pomerania?”
+
+Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began—at first
+reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from habit
+changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on—to explain
+the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained how an army,
+ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring her out
+of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part of that army was
+to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two hundred and twenty
+thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand Russians, were to operate in
+Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty thousand Russians and as many English
+were to land at Naples, and how a total force of five hundred thousand
+men was to attack the French from different sides. The old prince did
+not evince the least interest during this explanation, but as if he were
+not listening to it continued to dress while walking about, and three
+times unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: “The
+white one, the white one!”
+
+This meant that Tíkhon was not handing him the waistcoat he wanted.
+Another time he interrupted, saying:
+
+“And will she soon be confined?” and shaking his head reproachfully
+said: “That’s bad! Go on, go on.”
+
+The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
+description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old age:
+“Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra.” *
+
+     * “Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he’ll
+     return.”
+
+
+His son only smiled.
+
+“I don’t say it’s a plan I approve of,” said the son; “I am
+only telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now,
+not worse than this one.”
+
+“Well, you’ve told me nothing new,” and the old man repeated,
+meditatively and rapidly:
+
+“Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the
+dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle
+Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who by
+a strange caprice of his employer’s was admitted to table though the
+position of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly
+not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who generally kept
+very strictly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even important
+government officials to his table, had unexpectedly selected Michael
+Ivánovich (who always went into a corner to blow his nose on his
+checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals,
+and had more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael Ivánovich
+was “not a whit worse than you or I.” At dinner the prince usually
+spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivánovich more often than to anyone else.
+
+In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was
+exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen—one
+behind each chair—stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head
+butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making
+signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the door
+by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at a large
+gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes
+Bolkónski, opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted
+portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate)
+of a ruling prince, in a crown—an alleged descendant of Rúrik and
+ancestor of the Bolkónskis. Prince Andrew, looking again at that
+genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at
+a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.
+
+“How thoroughly like him that is!” he said to Princess Mary, who had
+come up to him.
+
+Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not understand
+what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired her with
+reverence and was beyond question.
+
+“Everyone has his Achilles’ heel,” continued Prince Andrew.
+“Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!”
+
+Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother’s
+criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were heard
+coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily as was
+his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his manners
+with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the great clock
+struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from the drawing
+room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes from under
+their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and rested on
+the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar enters, the
+sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired in all around
+him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly on the back of
+her neck.
+
+“I’m glad, glad, to see you,” he said, looking attentively into
+her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. “Sit down,
+sit down! Sit down, Michael Ivánovich!”
+
+He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman moved
+the chair for her.
+
+“Ho, ho!” said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded figure.
+“You’ve been in a hurry. That’s bad!”
+
+He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips only
+and not with his eyes.
+
+“You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible,” he
+said.
+
+The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She was
+silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father, and
+she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual acquaintances, and
+she became still more animated and chattered away giving him greetings
+from various people and retelling the town gossip.
+
+“Countess Apráksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has
+cried her eyes out,” she said, growing more and more lively.
+
+As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more sternly,
+and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had formed a
+definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael Ivánovich.
+
+“Well, Michael Ivánovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time
+of it. Prince Andrew” (he always spoke thus of his son) “has been
+telling me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I
+never thought much of him.”
+
+Michael Ivánovich did not at all know when “you and I” had said
+such things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as
+a peg on which to hang the prince’s favorite topic, he looked
+inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow.
+
+“He is a great tactician!” said the prince to his son, pointing to
+the architect.
+
+And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and the
+generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced not
+only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the
+A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant
+little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any
+Potëmkins or Suvórovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced
+that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war,
+but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing,
+pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with his
+father’s ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened to him
+with evident pleasure.
+
+“The past always seems good,” said he, “but did not Suvórov
+himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not know
+how to escape?”
+
+“Who told you that? Who?” cried the prince. “Suvórov!” And he
+jerked away his plate, which Tíkhon briskly caught. “Suvórov!...
+Consider, Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvórov; Moreau!...
+Moreau would have been a prisoner if Suvórov had had a free hand; but
+he had the Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have
+puzzled the devil himself! When you get there you’ll find out what
+those Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvórov couldn’t manage them so
+what chance has Michael Kutúzov? No, my dear boy,” he continued,
+“you and your generals won’t get on against Buonaparte; you’ll
+have to call in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight
+together. The German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to
+fetch the Frenchman, Moreau,” he said, alluding to the invitation made
+that year to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... “Wonderful!...
+Were the Potëmkins, Suvórovs, and Orlóvs Germans? No, lad, either you
+fellows have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help
+you, but we’ll see what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great
+commander among them! Hm!...”
+
+“I don’t at all say that all the plans are good,” said Prince
+Andrew, “I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You
+may laugh as much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great
+general!”
+
+“Michael Ivánovich!” cried the old prince to the architect who,
+busy with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: “Didn’t
+I tell you Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says the same
+thing.”
+
+“To be sure, your excellency,” replied the architect.
+
+The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.
+
+“Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got
+splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only
+idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began everybody
+has beaten the Germans. They beat no one—except one another. He made
+his reputation fighting them.”
+
+And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to
+him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His
+son made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were
+presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion. He
+listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how this
+old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could know and
+discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European military and
+political events.
+
+“You think I’m an old man and don’t understand the present state
+of affairs?” concluded his father. “But it troubles me. I don’t
+sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours shown
+his skill?” he concluded.
+
+“That would take too long to tell,” answered the son.
+
+“Well, then go off to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne,
+here’s another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours,” he
+exclaimed in excellent French.
+
+“You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!”
+
+“Dieu sait quand reviendra.” hummed the prince out of tune and, with
+a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.
+
+The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of
+the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her
+father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she
+took her sister-in-law’s arm and drew her into another room.
+
+“What a clever man your father is,” said she; “perhaps that is why
+I am afraid of him.”
+
+“Oh, he is so kind!” answered Princess Mary.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not altering
+his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little princess was in
+her sister-in-law’s room. Prince Andrew in a traveling coat without
+epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms assigned to him.
+After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing the trunks put in, he
+ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those things he always kept
+with him remained in his room; a small box, a large canteen fitted
+with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a saber—a present from
+his father who had brought it from the siege of Ochákov. All these
+traveling effects of Prince Andrew’s were in very good order: new,
+clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with tapes.
+
+When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men capable
+of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments
+one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince Andrew’s face
+looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him he paced
+briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking straight before him
+and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear going to the war, or was
+he sad at leaving his wife?—perhaps both, but evidently he did not
+wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing footsteps in the passage he
+hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped at a table as if tying the
+cover of the small box, and assumed his usual tranquil and impenetrable
+expression. It was the heavy tread of Princess Mary that he heard.
+
+“I hear you have given orders to harness,” she cried, panting (she
+had apparently been running), “and I did so wish to have another talk
+with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You are not
+angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrúsha,” she added,
+as if to explain such a question.
+
+She smiled as she uttered his pet name, “Andrúsha.” It was
+obviously strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be
+Andrúsha—the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in
+childhood.
+
+“And where is Lise?” he asked, answering her question only by a
+smile.
+
+“She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room.
+Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have,” said she, sitting
+down on the sofa, facing her brother. “She is quite a child: such a
+dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her.”
+
+Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical and
+contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.
+
+“One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from them,
+Andrew? Don’t forget that she has grown up and been educated in
+society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter into
+everyone’s situation. Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner. * Think
+what it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,
+to be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in her
+condition! It’s very hard.”
+
+     * To understand all is to forgive all.
+
+Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at those we
+think we thoroughly understand.
+
+“You live in the country and don’t think the life terrible,” he
+replied.
+
+“I... that’s different. Why speak of me? I don’t want any other
+life, and can’t, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young
+society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her
+life, all alone—for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what
+poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best society.
+There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne....”
+
+“I don’t like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all,” said Prince
+Andrew.
+
+“No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she’s much to be
+pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don’t need her,
+and she’s even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am
+even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She and
+Michael Ivánovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle and
+kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says:
+‘We don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as
+for the good we have done them.’ Father took her when she was homeless
+after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father
+likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads
+splendidly.”
+
+“To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father’s character sometimes
+makes things trying for you, doesn’t it?” Prince Andrew asked
+suddenly.
+
+Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.
+
+“For me? For me?... Trying for me!...” said she.
+
+“He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he’s getting
+very trying,” said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their
+father in order to puzzle or test his sister.
+
+“You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of
+intellectual pride,” said the princess, following the train of her own
+thoughts rather than the trend of the conversation—“and that’s a
+great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what feeling
+except veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I am so
+contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as happy as I
+am.”
+
+Her brother shook his head incredulously.
+
+“The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,
+Andrew... is Father’s way of treating religious subjects. I don’t
+understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what is
+as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing
+that makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of
+improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was a
+monk he received and had a long talk with.”
+
+“Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your
+powder,” said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.
+
+“Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me.
+Andrew...” she said timidly after a moment’s silence, “I have a
+great favor to ask of you.”
+
+“What is it, dear?”
+
+“No—promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble
+and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,
+Andrúsha!...” said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet
+taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were
+the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request was
+granted.
+
+She looked timidly at her brother.
+
+“Even if it were a great deal of trouble...” answered Prince Andrew,
+as if guessing what it was about.
+
+“Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as
+you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father’s father, our
+grandfather, wore it in all his wars.” (She still did not take out
+what she was holding in her reticule.) “So you promise?”
+
+“Of course. What is it?”
+
+“Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will
+never take it off. Do you promise?”
+
+“If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won’t break my neck...
+To please you...” said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing
+the pained expression his joke had brought to his sister’s face, he
+repented and added: “I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad.”
+
+“Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring you
+to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace,” said she in a voice
+trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before her
+brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour in a gold
+setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.
+
+She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.
+
+“Please, Andrew, for my sake!...”
+
+Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes lit
+up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her brother
+would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew understood,
+crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of tenderness, for
+he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.
+
+“Thank you, my dear.” She kissed him on the forehead and sat down
+again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.
+
+“As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you always
+used to be. Don’t judge Lise harshly,” she began. “She is so
+sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one.”
+
+“I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Másha, or blamed
+her. Why do you say all this to me?”
+
+Red patches appeared on Princess Mary’s face and she was silent as if
+she felt guilty.
+
+“I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to. And
+I am sorry for that,” he went on.
+
+The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried to
+say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the little
+princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings
+about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had complained of her
+fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After crying she had fallen
+asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.
+
+“Know this, Másha: I can’t reproach, have not reproached, and never
+shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach myself
+with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in whatever
+circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the truth... if
+you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why this
+is so I don’t know...”
+
+As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed
+her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and
+unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over
+her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.
+
+“Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or—go and wake and I’ll
+come in a moment. Petrúshka!” he called to his valet: “Come here,
+take these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right.”
+
+Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:
+“Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him
+to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have been
+answered.”
+
+“Well, maybe!” said Prince Andrew. “Go, Másha; I’ll come
+immediately.”
+
+On the way to his sister’s room, in the passage which connected one
+wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne smiling
+sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic and
+artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.
+
+“Oh! I thought you were in your room,” she said, for some reason
+blushing and dropping her eyes.
+
+Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger suddenly
+came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at her forehead
+and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt that the
+Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he reached his
+sister’s room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hurrying
+one word after another, came through the open door. She was speaking as
+usual in French, and as if after long self-restraint she wished to make
+up for lost time.
+
+“No, but imagine the old Countess Zúbova, with false curls and her
+mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old age....
+Ha, ha, ha! Mary!”
+
+This very sentence about Countess Zúbova and this same laugh Prince
+Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of others some
+five times. He entered the room softly. The little princess, plump and
+rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work in her hands, talking
+incessantly, repeating Petersburg reminiscences and even phrases. Prince
+Andrew came up, stroked her hair, and asked if she felt rested after
+their journey. She answered him and continued her chatter.
+
+The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn
+night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.
+Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense
+house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The
+domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to
+the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in the
+reception hall: Michael Ivánovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess
+Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been called to his
+father’s study as the latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All
+were waiting for them to come out.
+
+When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age
+spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but his
+son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.
+
+“Going?” And he went on writing.
+
+“I’ve come to say good-by.”
+
+“Kiss me here,” and he touched his cheek: “Thanks, thanks!”
+
+“What do you thank me for?”
+
+“For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman’s apron strings.
+The Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!” And he went on
+writing, so that his quill spluttered and squeaked. “If you have
+anything to say, say it. These two things can be done together,” he
+added.
+
+“About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your
+hands....”
+
+“Why talk nonsense? Say what you want.”
+
+“When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur.... Let
+him be here....”
+
+The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed his
+stern eyes on his son.
+
+“I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work,” said
+Prince Andrew, evidently confused. “I know that out of a million
+cases only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been
+telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened.”
+
+“Hm... Hm...” muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what he
+was writing. “I’ll do it.”
+
+He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to
+laugh.
+
+“It’s a bad business, eh?”
+
+“What is bad, Father?”
+
+“The wife!” said the old prince, briefly and significantly.
+
+“I don’t understand!” said Prince Andrew.
+
+“No, it can’t be helped, lad,” said the prince. “They’re
+all like that; one can’t unmarry. Don’t be afraid; I won’t tell
+anyone, but you know it yourself.”
+
+He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it, looked
+straight into his son’s face with keen eyes which seemed to see
+through him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.
+
+The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him. The
+old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and throwing
+down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed rapidity.
+
+“What’s to be done? She’s pretty! I will do everything. Make your
+mind easy,” said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.
+
+Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his father
+understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his son.
+
+“Listen!” said he; “don’t worry about your wife: what can be
+done shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilariónovich. *
+I have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not
+keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember
+and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all
+right—serve him. Nicholas Bolkónski’s son need not serve under
+anyone if he is in disfavor. Now come here.”
+
+     *Kutúzov.
+
+He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his son
+was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised the
+lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled with his
+bold, tall, close handwriting.
+
+“I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;
+hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond
+and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of
+Suvórov’s wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for
+you to read when I am gone. You will find them useful.”
+
+Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long time
+yet. He felt that he must not say it.
+
+“I will do it all, Father,” he said.
+
+“Well, now, good-by!” He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced
+him. “Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt me,
+your old father...” he paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous
+voice suddenly shrieked: “but if I hear that you have not behaved like
+a son of Nicholas Bolkónski, I shall be ashamed!”
+
+“You need not have said that to me, Father,” said the son with a
+smile.
+
+The old man was silent.
+
+“I also wanted to ask you,” continued Prince Andrew, “if I’m
+killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you—as I
+said yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please.”
+
+“Not let the wife have him?” said the old man, and laughed.
+
+They stood silent, facing one another. The old man’s sharp eyes were
+fixed straight on his son’s. Something twitched in the lower part of
+the old prince’s face.
+
+“We’ve said good-by. Go!” he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry
+voice, opening his door.
+
+“What is it? What?” asked both princesses when they saw for a moment
+at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white
+dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.
+
+Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.
+
+“Well!” he said, turning to his wife.
+
+And this “Well!” sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying: “Now
+go through your performance.”
+
+“Andrew, already!” said the little princess, turning pale and
+looking with dismay at her husband.
+
+He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.
+
+He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her face,
+and carefully placed her in an easy chair.
+
+“Adieu, Mary,” said he gently to his sister, taking her by the hand
+and kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.
+
+The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne chafing
+her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law, still looked
+with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through which Prince
+Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From
+the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent sound of the old man
+angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince Andrew gone when the study
+door opened quickly and the stern figure of the old man in the white
+dressing gown looked out.
+
+“Gone? That’s all right!” said he; and looking angrily at the
+unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed
+the door.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO: 1805
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and towns of
+the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly arriving from
+Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and burdening the
+inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the headquarters of
+the commander in chief, Kutúzov.
+
+On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just reached
+Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be inspected
+by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance of the
+locality and surroundings—fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled roofs,
+and hills in the distance—and despite the fact that the inhabitants
+(who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not Russians, the
+regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment preparing for
+an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.
+
+On the evening of the last day’s march an order had been received that
+the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march. Though
+the words of the order were not clear to the regimental commander, and
+the question arose whether the troops were to be in marching order or
+not, it was decided at a consultation between the battalion commanders
+to present the regiment in parade order, on the principle that it is
+always better to “bow too low than not bow low enough.” So the
+soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending and cleaning all
+night long without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and
+company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by morning the
+regiment—instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it had been on
+its last march the day before—presented a well-ordered array of two
+thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty, had every button
+and every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness. And not only
+externally was all in order, but had it pleased the commander in chief
+to look under the uniforms he would have found on every man a clean
+shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of articles, “awl,
+soap, and all,” as the soldiers say. There was only one circumstance
+concerning which no one could be at ease. It was the state of the
+soldiers’ boots. More than half the men’s boots were in holes. But
+this defect was not due to any fault of the regimental commander, for
+in spite of repeated demands boots had not been issued by the Austrian
+commissariat, and the regiment had marched some seven hundred miles.
+
+The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and
+thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider from
+chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform
+showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold epaulettes
+which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive shoulders. He
+had the air of a man happily performing one of the most solemn duties of
+his life. He walked about in front of the line and at every step pulled
+himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain that the commander
+admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was
+engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides military
+matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied no small part of his
+thoughts.
+
+“Well, Michael Mítrich, sir?” he said, addressing one of the
+battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain that
+they both felt happy). “We had our hands full last night. However, I
+think the regiment is not a bad one, eh?”
+
+The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.
+
+“It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsarítsin
+Meadow.”
+
+“What?” asked the commander.
+
+At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had been
+posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an aide-de-camp
+followed by a Cossack.
+
+The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been
+clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief
+wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on
+the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
+whatever.
+
+A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutúzov the day
+before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army of
+the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutúzov, not considering this
+junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of his view,
+to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the troops
+arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the regiment;
+so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the commander
+in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know these
+circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that the
+men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and that the
+commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On hearing this the
+regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged his shoulders, and
+spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.
+
+“A fine mess we’ve made of it!” he remarked.
+
+“There now! Didn’t I tell you, Michael Mítrich, that if it was said
+‘on the march’ it meant in greatcoats?” said he reproachfully to
+the battalion commander. “Oh, my God!” he added, stepping resolutely
+forward. “Company commanders!” he shouted in a voice accustomed to
+command. “Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?” he asked
+the aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently relating to the
+personage he was referring to.
+
+“In an hour’s time, I should say.”
+
+“Shall we have time to change clothes?”
+
+“I don’t know, General....”
+
+The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered the
+soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders ran off
+to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the greatcoats
+were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares that had up
+to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and stretch and
+hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and fro, throwing
+up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and pulling the straps
+over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and drawing the sleeves on
+with upraised arms.
+
+In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had become gray
+instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his jerky steps
+to the front of the regiment and examined it from a distance.
+
+“Whatever is this? This!” he shouted and stood still. “Commander
+of the third company!”
+
+“Commander of the third company wanted by the general!... commander to
+the general... third company to the commander.” The words passed along
+the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing officer.
+
+When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination in
+a cry of: “The general to the third company,” the missing officer
+appeared from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged man
+and not in the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on his
+toes toward the general. The captain’s face showed the uneasiness of
+a schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not learned. Spots
+appeared on his nose, the redness of which was evidently due to
+intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The general looked the
+captain up and down as he came up panting, slackening his pace as he
+approached.
+
+“You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?”
+shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and pointing
+at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat of bluish
+cloth, which contrasted with the others. “What have you been after?
+The commander in chief is expected and you leave your place? Eh? I’ll
+teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade.... Eh...?”
+
+The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,
+pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this
+pressure lay his only hope of salvation.
+
+“Well, why don’t you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as a
+Hungarian?” said the commander with an austere gibe.
+
+“Your excellency...”
+
+“Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
+excellency?... nobody knows.”
+
+“Your excellency, it’s the officer Dólokhov, who has been reduced
+to the ranks,” said the captain softly.
+
+“Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier?
+If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the
+others.”
+
+“Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march.”
+
+“Gave him leave? Leave? That’s just like you young men,” said the
+regimental commander cooling down a little. “Leave indeed.... One says
+a word to you and you... What?” he added with renewed irritation, “I
+beg you to dress your men decently.”
+
+And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his jerky
+steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display of
+anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further excuse for
+wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at another
+because his line was not straight, he reached the third company.
+
+“H-o-o-w are you standing? Where’s your leg? Your leg?” shouted
+the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there were
+still five men between him and Dólokhov with his bluish-gray uniform.
+
+Dólokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with his
+clear, insolent eyes in the general’s face.
+
+“Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his coat...
+the ras...” he did not finish.
+
+“General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure...”
+Dólokhov hurriedly interrupted.
+
+“No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!”
+
+“Not bound to endure insults,” Dólokhov concluded in loud, ringing
+tones.
+
+The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became silent,
+angrily pulling down his tight scarf.
+
+“I request you to have the goodness to change your coat,” he said as
+he turned away.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+“He’s coming!” shouted the signaler at that moment.
+
+The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the stirrup
+with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle, righted himself,
+drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute countenance, opening
+his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered like a bird
+preening its plumage and became motionless.
+
+“Att-ention!” shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking
+voice which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment, and
+welcome for the approaching chief.
+
+Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a high,
+light blue Viennese calèche, slightly creaking on its springs and drawn
+by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the calèche galloped the suite
+and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutúzov sat an Austrian general, in
+a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian black ones. The
+calèche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutúzov and the Austrian
+general were talking in low voices and Kutúzov smiled slightly as
+treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as if those two
+thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the regimental commander did
+not exist.
+
+The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as with a
+jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence the
+feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment roared,
+“Health to your ex... len... len... lency!” and again all became
+silent. At first Kutúzov stood still while the regiment moved; then he
+and the general in white, accompanied by the suite, walked between the
+ranks.
+
+From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief and
+devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and from
+the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals, bending forward
+and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and from the way he
+darted forward at every word or gesture of the commander in chief,
+it was evident that he performed his duty as a subordinate with even
+greater zeal than his duty as a commander. Thanks to the strictness and
+assiduity of its commander the regiment, in comparison with others that
+had reached Braunau at the same time, was in splendid condition. There
+were only 217 sick and stragglers. Everything was in good order except
+the boots.
+
+Kutúzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few
+friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, sometimes
+also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several times shook his
+head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian general with an expression
+which seemed to say that he was not blaming anyone, but could not help
+noticing what a bad state of things it was. The regimental commander
+ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to miss a single word of the
+commander in chief’s regarding the regiment. Behind Kutúzov, at a
+distance that allowed every softly spoken word to be heard, followed
+some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen talked among themselves
+and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the commander in chief walked
+a handsome adjutant. This was Prince Bolkónski. Beside him was his
+comrade Nesvítski, a tall staff officer, extremely stout, with a
+kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvítski could hardly
+keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who walked
+beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and without a smile or a
+change in the expression of his fixed eyes, watched the regimental
+commander’s back and mimicked his every movement. Each time the
+commander started and bent forward, the hussar started and bent forward
+in exactly the same manner. Nesvítski laughed and nudged the others to
+make them look at the wag.
+
+Kutúzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which were
+starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the
+third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected this,
+involuntarily came closer to him.
+
+“Ah, Timókhin!” said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had
+been reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.
+
+One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself
+more than Timókhin had done when he was reprimanded by the regimental
+commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed him he drew
+himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not have sustained
+it had the commander in chief continued to look at him, and so Kutúzov,
+who evidently understood his case and wished him nothing but good,
+quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile flitting over his
+scarred and puffy face.
+
+“Another Ismail comrade,” said he. “A brave officer! Are you
+satisfied with him?” he asked the regimental commander.
+
+And the latter—unconscious that he was being reflected in the hussar
+officer as in a looking glass—started, moved forward, and answered:
+“Highly satisfied, your excellency!”
+
+“We all have our weaknesses,” said Kutúzov smiling and walking away
+from him. “He used to have a predilection for Bacchus.”
+
+The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this and did
+not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of the red-nosed
+captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose
+with such exactitude that Nesvítski could not help laughing. Kutúzov
+turned round. The officer evidently had complete control of his face,
+and while Kutúzov was turning managed to make a grimace and then assume
+a most serious, deferential, and innocent expression.
+
+The third company was the last, and Kutúzov pondered, apparently trying
+to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from among the
+suite and said in French:
+
+“You told me to remind you of the officer Dólokhov, reduced to the
+ranks in this regiment.”
+
+“Where is Dólokhov?” asked Kutúzov.
+
+Dólokhov, who had already changed into a soldier’s gray greatcoat,
+did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired
+soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks, went
+up to the commander in chief, and presented arms.
+
+“Have you a complaint to make?” Kutúzov asked with a slight frown.
+
+“This is Dólokhov,” said Prince Andrew.
+
+“Ah!” said Kutúzov. “I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your
+duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan’t forget you if you deserve
+well.”
+
+The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as boldly as
+they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by their expression
+to tear open the veil of convention that separates a commander in chief
+so widely from a private.
+
+“One thing I ask of your excellency,” Dólokhov said in his firm,
+ringing, deliberate voice. “I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault
+and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!”
+
+Kutúzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had
+turned from Captain Timókhin again flitted over his face. He turned
+away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dólokhov had said to
+him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he was
+weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away and
+went to the carriage.
+
+The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their appointed
+quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and clothes and
+to rest after their hard marches.
+
+“You won’t bear me a grudge, Prokhór Ignátych?” said the
+regimental commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its
+quarters and riding up to Captain Timókhin who was walking in front.
+(The regimental commander’s face now that the inspection was happily
+over beamed with irrepressible delight.) “It’s in the Emperor’s
+service... it can’t be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on
+parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very
+pleased!” And he held out his hand to the captain.
+
+“Don’t mention it, General, as if I’d be so bold!” replied the
+captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where
+two front teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end
+of a gun at Ismail.
+
+“And tell Mr. Dólokhov that I won’t forget him—he may be quite
+easy. And tell me, please—I’ve been meaning to ask—how is he
+behaving himself, and in general...”
+
+“As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your excellency;
+but his character...” said Timókhin.
+
+“And what about his character?” asked the regimental commander.
+
+“It’s different on different days,” answered the captain. “One
+day he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he’s
+a wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew.”
+
+“Oh, well, well!” remarked the regimental commander. “Still, one
+must have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important
+connections... Well, then, you just...”
+
+“I will, your excellency,” said Timókhin, showing by his smile that
+he understood his commander’s wish.
+
+“Well, of course, of course!”
+
+The regimental commander sought out Dólokhov in the ranks and, reining
+in his horse, said to him:
+
+“After the next affair... epaulettes.”
+
+Dólokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the mocking
+smile on his lips change.
+
+“Well, that’s all right,” continued the regimental commander. “A
+cup of vodka for the men from me,” he added so that the soldiers
+could hear. “I thank you all! God be praised!” and he rode past that
+company and overtook the next one.
+
+“Well, he’s really a good fellow, one can serve under him,” said
+Timókhin to the subaltern beside him.
+
+“In a word, a hearty one...” said the subaltern, laughing (the
+regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).
+
+The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected the
+soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers’ voices could be
+heard on every side.
+
+“And they said Kutúzov was blind of one eye?”
+
+“And so he is! Quite blind!”
+
+“No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands...
+he noticed everything...”
+
+“When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I...”
+
+“And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were
+smeared with chalk—as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as
+they do the guns.”
+
+“I say, Fédeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You
+were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau.”
+
+“Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn’t
+know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are
+putting them down. When they’ve been put down, the war with Buonaparte
+will begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you’re a fool.
+You’d better listen more carefully!”
+
+“What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is
+turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat
+cooked before we reach our quarters.”
+
+“Give me a biscuit, you devil!”
+
+“And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That’s just it, friend! Ah,
+well, never mind, here you are.”
+
+“They might call a halt here or we’ll have to do another four miles
+without eating.”
+
+“Wasn’t it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still
+and are drawn along.”
+
+“And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all
+seemed to be Poles—all under the Russian crown—but here they’re
+all regular Germans.”
+
+“Singers to the front” came the captain’s order.
+
+And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A
+drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and flourishing
+his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers’ song, commencing with the
+words: “Morning dawned, the sun was rising,” and concluding: “On
+then, brothers, on to glory, led by Father Kámenski.” This song had
+been composed in the Turkish campaign and now being sung in Austria, the
+only change being that the words “Father Kámenski” were replaced by
+“Father Kutúzov.”
+
+Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms
+as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer—a lean, handsome
+soldier of forty—looked sternly at the singers and screwed up his
+eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on him,
+he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but precious
+object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds, suddenly
+flung it down and began:
+
+“Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!”
+
+“Oh, my bower new...!” chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet
+player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the front
+and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his shoulders and
+flourished his castanets as if threatening someone. The soldiers,
+swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously, marched with long
+steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the creaking of springs,
+and the tramp of horses’ hoofs were heard. Kutúzov and his suite were
+returning to the town. The commander in chief made a sign that the
+men should continue to march at ease, and he and all his suite showed
+pleasure at the sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing
+soldier and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file
+from the right flank, beside which the carriage passed the company,
+a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted notice. It was Dólokhov
+marching with particular grace and boldness in time to the song and
+looking at those driving past as if he pitied all who were not at that
+moment marching with the company. The hussar cornet of Kutúzov’s
+suite who had mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from the
+carriage and rode up to Dólokhov.
+
+Hussar cornet Zherkóv had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to
+the wild set led by Dólokhov. Zherkóv had met Dólokhov abroad as a
+private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutúzov had
+spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of
+an old friend.
+
+“My dear fellow, how are you?” said he through the singing, making
+his horse keep pace with the company.
+
+“How am I?” Dólokhov answered coldly. “I am as you see.”
+
+The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy
+gaiety with which Zherkóv spoke, and to the intentional coldness of
+Dólokhov’s reply.
+
+“And how do you get on with the officers?” inquired Zherkóv.
+
+“All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto the
+staff?”
+
+“I was attached; I’m on duty.”
+
+Both were silent.
+
+“She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve,” went the
+song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness.
+Their conversation would probably have been different but for the effect
+of that song.
+
+“Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?” asked Dólokhov.
+
+“The devil only knows! They say so.”
+
+“I’m glad,” answered Dólokhov briefly and clearly, as the song
+demanded.
+
+“I say, come round some evening and we’ll have a game of faro!”
+said Zherkóv.
+
+“Why, have you too much money?”
+
+“Do come.”
+
+“I can’t. I’ve sworn not to. I won’t drink and won’t play till
+I get reinstated.”
+
+“Well, that’s only till the first engagement.”
+
+“We shall see.”
+
+They were again silent.
+
+“Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the
+staff...”
+
+Dólokhov smiled. “Don’t trouble. If I want anything, I won’t
+beg—I’ll take it!”
+
+“Well, never mind; I only...”
+
+“And I only...”
+
+“Good-by.”
+
+“Good health...”
+
+        “It’s a long, long way.
+        To my native land...”
+
+
+Zherkóv touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly from
+foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down, galloped
+past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping time to the
+song.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+On returning from the review, Kutúzov took the Austrian general into
+his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers
+relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the
+letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command of
+the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkónski came into the room with the
+required papers. Kutúzov and the Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrath
+were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread out.
+
+“Ah!...” said Kutúzov glancing at Bolkónski as if by this
+exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with the
+conversation in French.
+
+“All I can say, General,” said he with a pleasant elegance
+of expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each
+deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutúzov himself listened
+with pleasure to his own voice. “All I can say, General, is that if
+the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the
+Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should long
+ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me
+personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command
+of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful
+general—of whom Austria has so many—and to lay down all this heavy
+responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us,
+General.”
+
+And Kutúzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, “You are quite at
+liberty not to believe me and I don’t even care whether you do or
+not, but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole
+point.”
+
+The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to reply
+in the same tone.
+
+“On the contrary,” he said, in a querulous and angry tone that
+contrasted with his flattering words, “on the contrary, your
+excellency’s participation in the common action is highly valued by
+His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the splendid
+Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have been
+accustomed to win in their battles,” he concluded his evidently
+prearranged sentence.
+
+Kutúzov bowed with the same smile.
+
+“But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with which
+His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine that the
+Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a leader as General
+Mack, have by now already gained a decisive victory and no longer need
+our aid,” said Kutúzov.
+
+The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an Austrian
+defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the unfavorable rumors
+that were afloat, and so Kutúzov’s suggestion of an Austrian victory
+sounded much like irony. But Kutúzov went on blandly smiling with the
+same expression, which seemed to say that he had a right to suppose
+so. And, in fact, the last letter he had received from Mack’s army
+informed him of a victory and stated strategically the position of the
+army was very favorable.
+
+“Give me that letter,” said Kutúzov turning to Prince Andrew.
+“Please have a look at it”—and Kutúzov with an ironical smile
+about the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the
+following passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand’s letter:
+
+We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men with
+which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech. Also,
+as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage of
+commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not
+cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line
+of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his
+intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful
+ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the Imperial
+Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in conjunction with
+it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the fate he deserves.
+
+Kutúzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at the
+member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.
+
+“But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect
+the worst,” said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have done
+with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round at the
+aide-de-camp.
+
+“Excuse me, General,” interrupted Kutúzov, also turning to Prince
+Andrew. “Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlóvski all the
+reports from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and
+here is one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are
+these,” he said, handing him several papers, “make a neat memorandum
+in French out of all this, showing all the news we have had of the
+movements of the Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency.”
+
+Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from the
+first not only what had been said but also what Kutúzov would have
+liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both,
+stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.
+
+Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia, he
+had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his face,
+in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his former
+affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man who has time
+to think of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with
+agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed more satisfaction
+with himself and those around him, his smile and glance were brighter
+and more attractive.
+
+Kutúzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very kindly,
+promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the other adjutants,
+and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more serious commissions.
+From Vienna Kutúzov wrote to his old comrade, Prince Andrew’s father.
+
+Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his industry,
+firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to have such a
+subordinate by me.
+
+On Kutúzov’s staff, among his fellow officers and in the army
+generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two
+quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be
+different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great things
+of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with them Prince
+Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority, disliked him and
+considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But among these people
+Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that they respected and even
+feared him.
+
+Coming out of Kutúzov’s room into the waiting room with the papers in
+his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp on duty,
+Kozlóvski, who was sitting at the window with a book.
+
+“Well, Prince?” asked Kozlóvski.
+
+“I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not
+advancing.”
+
+“And why is it?”
+
+Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Any news from Mack?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come.”
+
+“Probably,” said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.
+
+But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the
+order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,
+who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.
+Prince Andrew stopped short.
+
+“Commander in Chief Kutúzov?” said the newly arrived general
+speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and
+advancing straight toward the inner door.
+
+“The commander in chief is engaged,” said Kozlóvski, going
+hurriedly up to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door.
+“Whom shall I announce?”
+
+The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlóvski, who was
+rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.
+
+“The commander in chief is engaged,” repeated Kozlóvski calmly.
+
+The general’s face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He took
+out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out the
+leaf, gave it to Kozlóvski, stepped quickly to the window, and threw
+himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if asking, “Why
+do they look at me?” Then he lifted his head, stretched his neck as
+if he intended to say something, but immediately, with affected
+indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer sound which
+immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened and Kutúzov
+appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged head bent forward
+as though running away from some danger, and, making long, quick strides
+with his thin legs, went up to Kutúzov.
+
+“Vous voyez le malheureux Mack,” he uttered in a broken voice.
+
+Kutúzov’s face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly
+immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a wave
+and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head respectfully,
+closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before him, and closed
+the door himself behind him.
+
+The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been beaten
+and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be correct.
+Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various directions with
+orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had hitherto been
+inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.
+
+Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief interest
+lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack and heard the
+details of his disaster he understood that half the campaign was lost,
+understood all the difficulties of the Russian army’s position, and
+vividly imagined what awaited it and the part he would have to
+play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the thought of the
+humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week’s time he might,
+perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian encounter with the
+French since Suvórov met them. He feared that Bonaparte’s genius
+might outweigh all the courage of the Russian troops, and at the same
+time could not admit the idea of his hero being disgraced.
+
+Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward his
+room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the corridor
+he met Nesvítski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkóv;
+they were as usual laughing.
+
+“Why are you so glum?” asked Nesvítski noticing Prince Andrew’s
+pale face and glittering eyes.
+
+“There’s nothing to be gay about,” answered Bolkónski.
+
+Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvítski and Zherkóv, there came toward
+them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general
+who was on Kutúzov’s staff in charge of the provisioning of the Russian
+army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the previous
+evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor for the generals to
+pass the three officers quite easily, but Zherkóv, pushing Nesvítski
+aside with his arm, said in a breathless voice,
+
+“They’re coming!... they’re coming!... Stand aside, make way,
+please make way!”
+
+The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid
+embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkóv there suddenly
+appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.
+
+“Your excellency,” said he in German, stepping forward and
+addressing the Austrian general, “I have the honor to congratulate
+you.”
+
+He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with the
+other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.
+
+The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing the
+seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment’s
+attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.
+
+“I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived, quite
+well, only a little bruised just here,” he added, pointing with a
+beaming smile to his head.
+
+The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
+
+“Gott, wie naiv!” * said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.
+
+     * “Good God, what simplicity!”
+
+
+Nesvítski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but
+Bolkónski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and
+turned to Zherkóv. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance
+of Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
+Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkóv’s untimely jest.
+
+“If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself,” he said
+sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, “I can’t prevent
+your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in my
+presence, I will teach you to behave yourself.”
+
+Nesvítski and Zherkóv were so surprised by this outburst that they
+gazed at Bolkónski silently with wide-open eyes.
+
+“What’s the matter? I only congratulated them,” said Zherkóv.
+
+“I am not jesting with you; please be silent!” cried Bolkónski,
+and taking Nesvítski’s arm he left Zherkóv, who did not know what to
+say.
+
+“Come, what’s the matter, old fellow?” said Nesvítski trying to
+soothe him.
+
+“What’s the matter?” exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in
+his excitement. “Don’t you understand that either we are officers
+serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and
+grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely
+lackeys who care nothing for their master’s business. Quarante mille
+hommes massacrés et l’armée de nos alliés détruite, et vous
+trouvez là le mot pour rire,” * he said, as if strengthening his
+views by this French sentence. “C’est bien pour un garçon de rien
+comme cet individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas
+pour vous. *(2) Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this
+way,” he added in Russian—but pronouncing the word with a French
+accent—having noticed that Zherkóv could still hear him.
+
+     * “Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies
+     destroyed, and you find that a cause for jesting!”
+
+     * (2) “It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow
+     of whom you have made a friend, but not for you, not for
+     you.”
+
+
+He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he turned
+and went out of the corridor.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Pávlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The
+squadron in which Nicholas Rostóv served as a cadet was quartered in
+the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were
+assigned to cavalry-captain Denísov, the squadron commander, known
+throughout the whole cavalry division as Váska Denísov. Cadet Rostóv,
+ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had lived with the
+squadron commander.
+
+On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the news
+of Mack’s defeat, the camp life of the officers of this squadron was
+proceeding as usual. Denísov, who had been losing at cards all night,
+had not yet come home when Rostóv rode back early in the morning from
+a foraging expedition. Rostóv in his cadet uniform, with a jerk to his
+horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg over the saddle with a supple
+youthful movement, stood for a moment in the stirrup as if loathe to
+part from his horse, and at last sprang down and called to his orderly.
+
+“Ah, Bondarénko, dear friend!” said he to the hussar who rushed up
+headlong to the horse. “Walk him up and down, my dear fellow,” he
+continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young
+people show to everyone when they are happy.
+
+“Yes, your excellency,” answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his
+head.
+
+“Mind, walk him up and down well!”
+
+Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarénko had already
+thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse’s head. It was
+evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that it paid to
+serve him. Rostóv patted the horse’s neck and then his flank, and
+lingered for a moment.
+
+“Splendid! What a horse he will be!” he thought with a smile, and
+holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the
+porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork in
+hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face
+immediately brightened on seeing Rostóv. “Schön gut Morgen! Schön
+gut Morgen!” * he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased
+to greet the young man.
+
+    * “A very good morning! A very good morning!”
+
+
+“Schon fleissig?” * said Rostóv with the same gay brotherly smile
+which did not leave his eager face. “Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen!
+Kaiser Alexander hoch!” *(2) said he, quoting words often repeated by
+the German landlord.
+
+    * “Busy already?”
+
+    * (2) “Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians!
+     Hurrah for Emperor Alexander!”
+
+
+The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and
+waving it above his head cried:
+
+“Und die ganze Welt hoch!” *
+
+    * “And hurrah for the whole world!”
+
+
+Rostóv waved his cap above his head like the German and cried laughing,
+“Und vivat die ganze Welt!” Though neither the German cleaning his
+cowshed nor Rostóv back with his platoon from foraging for hay had any
+reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight and
+brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of their mutual affection,
+and parted smiling, the German returning to his cowshed and Rostóv
+going to the cottage he occupied with Denísov.
+
+“What about your master?” he asked Lavrúshka, Denísov’s orderly,
+whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.
+
+“Hasn’t been in since the evening. Must have been losing,”
+answered Lavrúshka. “I know by now, if he wins he comes back early to
+brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he’s lost and
+will come back in a rage. Will you have coffee?”
+
+“Yes, bring some.”
+
+Ten minutes later Lavrúshka brought the coffee. “He’s coming!”
+said he. “Now for trouble!” Rostóv looked out of the window and
+saw Denísov coming home. Denísov was a small man with a red face,
+sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore an
+unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a crumpled
+shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch gloomily, hanging
+his head.
+
+“Lavwúska!” he shouted loudly and angrily, “take it off,
+blockhead!”
+
+“Well, I am taking it off,” replied Lavrúshka’s voice.
+
+“Ah, you’re up already,” said Denísov, entering the room.
+
+“Long ago,” answered Rostóv, “I have already been for the hay,
+and have seen Fräulein Mathilde.”
+
+“Weally! And I’ve been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a
+damned fool!” cried Denísov, not pronouncing his r’s. “Such ill
+luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on. Hullo
+there! Tea!”
+
+Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong
+teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his thick
+tangled black hair.
+
+“And what devil made me go to that wat?” (an officer nicknamed
+“the rat”) he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both
+hands. “Just fancy, he didn’t let me win a single cahd, not one
+cahd.”
+
+He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in his
+fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while he
+continued to shout.
+
+“He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles it;
+gives the singles and snatches the doubles!”
+
+He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it away.
+Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked cheerfully
+with his glittering, black eyes at Rostóv.
+
+“If at least we had some women here; but there’s nothing foh one
+to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who’s
+there?” he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy
+boots and the clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a respectful
+cough.
+
+“The squadron quartermaster!” said Lavrúshka.
+
+Denísov’s face puckered still more.
+
+“Wetched!” he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in it.
+“Wostóv, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove the
+purse undah the pillow,” he said, and went out to the quartermaster.
+
+Rostóv took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new coins
+in separate piles, began counting them.
+
+“Ah! Telyánin! How d’ye do? They plucked me last night,” came
+Denísov’s voice from the next room.
+
+“Where? At Bykov’s, at the rat’s... I knew it,” replied a piping
+voice, and Lieutenant Telyánin, a small officer of the same squadron,
+entered the room.
+
+Rostóv thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little hand
+which was offered him. Telyánin for some reason had been transferred
+from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very well in the
+regiment but was not liked; Rostóv especially detested him and was
+unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to the man.
+
+“Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?” he asked. (Rook
+was a young horse Telyánin had sold to Rostóv.)
+
+The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in the
+face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.
+
+“I saw you riding this morning...” he added.
+
+“Oh, he’s all right, a good horse,” answered Rostóv, though the
+horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half
+that sum. “He’s begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg,” he
+added.
+
+“The hoof’s cracked! That’s nothing. I’ll teach you what to do
+and show you what kind of rivet to use.”
+
+“Yes, please do,” said Rostóv.
+
+“I’ll show you, I’ll show you! It’s not a secret. And it’s a
+horse you’ll thank me for.”
+
+“Then I’ll have it brought round,” said Rostóv wishing to avoid
+Telyánin, and he went out to give the order.
+
+In the passage Denísov, with a pipe, was squatting on the threshold
+facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing Rostóv,
+Denísov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder with his
+thumb to the room where Telyánin was sitting, he frowned and gave a
+shudder of disgust.
+
+“Ugh! I don’t like that fellow,” he said, regardless of the
+quartermaster’s presence.
+
+Rostóv shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: “Nor do I, but
+what’s one to do?” and, having given his order, he returned to
+Telyánin.
+
+Telyánin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostóv had
+left him, rubbing his small white hands.
+
+“Well there certainly are disgusting people,” thought Rostóv as he
+entered.
+
+“Have you told them to bring the horse?” asked Telyánin, getting up
+and looking carelessly about him.
+
+“I have.”
+
+“Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denísov about
+yesterday’s order. Have you got it, Denísov?”
+
+“Not yet. But where are you off to?”
+
+“I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse,” said
+Telyánin.
+
+They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant
+explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.
+
+When Rostóv went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on the
+table. Denísov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a sheet of
+paper. He looked gloomily in Rostóv’s face and said: “I am witing
+to her.”
+
+He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,
+evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to
+write, told Rostóv the contents of his letter.
+
+“You see, my fwiend,” he said, “we sleep when we don’t love. We
+are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God, one
+is pua’ as on the fihst day of cweation... Who’s that now? Send him
+to the devil, I’m busy!” he shouted to Lavrúshka, who went up to
+him not in the least abashed.
+
+“Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It’s the
+quartermaster for the money.”
+
+Denísov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.
+
+“Wetched business,” he muttered to himself. “How much is left in
+the puhse?” he asked, turning to Rostóv.
+
+“Seven new and three old imperials.”
+
+“Oh, it’s wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you
+sca’cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh,” he shouted to Lavrúshka.
+
+“Please, Denísov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know,”
+said Rostóv, blushing.
+
+“Don’t like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don’t,” growled
+Denísov.
+
+“But if you won’t accept money from me like a comrade, you will
+offend me. Really I have some,” Rostóv repeated.
+
+“No, I tell you.”
+
+And Denísov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.
+
+“Where have you put it, Wostóv?”
+
+“Under the lower pillow.”
+
+“It’s not there.”
+
+Denísov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.
+
+“That’s a miwacle.”
+
+“Wait, haven’t you dropped it?” said Rostóv, picking up the
+pillows one at a time and shaking them.
+
+He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.
+
+“Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you kept
+it under your head like a treasure,” said Rostóv. “I put it just
+here. Where is it?” he asked, turning to Lavrúshka.
+
+“I haven’t been in the room. It must be where you put it.”
+
+“But it isn’t?...”
+
+“You’re always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget
+it. Feel in your pockets.”
+
+“No, if I hadn’t thought of it being a treasure,” said Rostóv,
+“but I remember putting it there.”
+
+Lavrúshka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and under
+the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of the
+room. Denísov silently watched Lavrúshka’s movements, and when the
+latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found
+Denísov glanced at Rostóv.
+
+“Wostóv, you’ve not been playing schoolboy twicks...”
+
+Rostóv felt Denísov’s gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and
+instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested
+somewhere below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not
+draw breath.
+
+“And there hasn’t been anyone in the room except the lieutenant and
+yourselves. It must be here somewhere,” said Lavrúshka.
+
+“Now then, you devil’s puppet, look alive and hunt for it!”
+shouted Denísov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man with
+a threatening gesture. “If the purse isn’t found I’ll flog you,
+I’ll flog you all.”
+
+Rostóv, his eyes avoiding Denísov, began buttoning his coat, buckled
+on his saber, and put on his cap.
+
+“I must have that purse, I tell you,” shouted Denísov, shaking his
+orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.
+
+“Denísov, let him alone, I know who has taken it,” said Rostóv,
+going toward the door without raising his eyes. Denísov paused, thought
+a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostóv hinted at, seized
+his arm.
+
+“Nonsense!” he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood
+out like cords. “You are mad, I tell you. I won’t allow it.
+The purse is here! I’ll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be
+found.”
+
+“I know who has taken it,” repeated Rostóv in an unsteady voice,
+and went to the door.
+
+“And I tell you, don’t you dahe to do it!” shouted Denísov,
+rushing at the cadet to restrain him.
+
+But Rostóv pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though
+Denísov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his
+face.
+
+“Do you understand what you’re saying?” he said in a trembling
+voice. “There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it
+is not so, then...”
+
+He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
+
+“Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody,” were the last words
+Rostóv heard.
+
+Rostóv went to Telyánin’s quarters.
+
+“The master is not in, he’s gone to headquarters,” said
+Telyánin’s orderly. “Has something happened?” he added, surprised
+at the cadet’s troubled face.
+
+“No, nothing.”
+
+“You’ve only just missed him,” said the orderly.
+
+The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and
+Rostóv, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was
+an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostóv rode up to
+it and saw Telyánin’s horse at the porch.
+
+In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish of
+sausages and a bottle of wine.
+
+“Ah, you’ve come here too, young man!” he said, smiling and
+raising his eyebrows.
+
+“Yes,” said Rostóv as if it cost him a great deal to utter the
+word; and he sat down at the nearest table.
+
+Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in the
+room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of knives
+and the munching of the lieutenant.
+
+When Telyánin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a double
+purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white, turned-up
+fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his eyebrows gave it to
+the waiter.
+
+“Please be quick,” he said.
+
+The coin was a new one. Rostóv rose and went up to Telyánin.
+
+“Allow me to look at your purse,” he said in a low, almost
+inaudible, voice.
+
+With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyánin handed him the
+purse.
+
+“Yes, it’s a nice purse. Yes, yes,” he said, growing suddenly
+pale, and added, “Look at it, young man.”
+
+Rostóv took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in it, and
+looked at Telyánin. The lieutenant was looking about in his usual way
+and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.
+
+“If we get to Vienna I’ll get rid of it there but in these wretched
+little towns there’s nowhere to spend it,” said he. “Well, let me
+have it, young man, I’m going.”
+
+Rostóv did not speak.
+
+“And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite
+decently here,” continued Telyánin. “Now then, let me have it.”
+
+He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostóv let go of
+it. Telyánin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into the
+pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his mouth
+slightly open, as if to say, “Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my
+pocket and that’s quite simple and is no one else’s business.”
+
+“Well, young man?” he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted
+brows he glanced into Rostóv’s eyes.
+
+Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyánin’s eyes to
+Rostóv’s and back, and back again and again in an instant.
+
+“Come here,” said Rostóv, catching hold of Telyánin’s arm and
+almost dragging him to the window. “That money is Denísov’s; you
+took it...” he whispered just above Telyánin’s ear.
+
+“What? What? How dare you? What?” said Telyánin.
+
+But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an entreaty for
+pardon. As soon as Rostóv heard them, an enormous load of doubt
+fell from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to pity the
+miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun had to be
+completed.
+
+“Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine,” muttered
+Telyánin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room. “We
+must have an explanation...”
+
+“I know it and shall prove it,” said Rostóv.
+
+“I...”
+
+Every muscle of Telyánin’s pale, terrified face began to quiver, his
+eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not rising
+to Rostóv’s face, and his sobs were audible.
+
+“Count!... Don’t ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,
+take it...” He threw it on the table. “I have an old father and
+mother!...”
+
+Rostóv took the money, avoiding Telyánin’s eyes, and went out of the
+room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced his
+steps. “O God,” he said with tears in his eyes, “how could you do
+it?”
+
+“Count...” said Telyánin drawing nearer to him.
+
+“Don’t touch me,” said Rostóv, drawing back. “If you need it,
+take the money,” and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+That same evening there was an animated discussion among the
+squadron’s officers in Denísov’s quarters.
+
+“And I tell you, Rostóv, that you must apologize to the colonel!”
+said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and
+many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostóv who was crimson with
+excitement.
+
+The staff captain, Kírsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks for
+affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.
+
+“I will allow no one to call me a liar!” cried Rostóv. “He told
+me I lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me
+on duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make
+me apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
+beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then...”
+
+“You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen,” interrupted
+the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache.
+“You tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an
+officer has stolen...”
+
+“I’m not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of
+other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but I am
+not a diplomatist. That’s why I joined the hussars, thinking that here
+one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying—so let him
+give me satisfaction...”
+
+“That’s all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that’s not the
+point. Ask Denísov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to
+demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?”
+
+Denísov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the
+conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered the
+staff captain’s question by a disapproving shake of his head.
+
+“You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other
+officers,” continued the staff captain, “and Bogdánich” (the
+colonel was called Bogdánich) “shuts you up.”
+
+“He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth.”
+
+“Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and must
+apologize.”
+
+“Not on any account!” exclaimed Rostóv.
+
+“I did not expect this of you,” said the staff captain seriously and
+severely. “You don’t wish to apologize, but, man, it’s not only to
+him but to the whole regiment—all of us—you’re to blame all round.
+The case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and
+taken advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the
+officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and
+disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of one
+scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don’t see it like that. And
+Bogdánich was a brick: he told you you were saying what was not true.
+It’s not pleasant, but what’s to be done, my dear fellow? You landed
+yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth the thing over, some
+conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole
+affair public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but why not
+apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdánich may
+be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel! You’re quick at
+taking offense, but you don’t mind disgracing the whole regiment!”
+The staff captain’s voice began to tremble. “You have been in the
+regiment next to no time, my lad, you’re here today and tomorrow
+you’ll be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your fingers when
+it is said ‘There are thieves among the Pávlograd officers!’ But
+it’s not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denísov? It’s not the
+same!”
+
+Denísov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked with
+his glittering black eyes at Rostóv.
+
+“You value your own pride and don’t wish to apologize,” continued
+the staff captain, “but we old fellows, who have grown up in and, God
+willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of the
+regiment, and Bogdánich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old fellow! And
+all this is not right, it’s not right! You may take offense or not but
+I always stick to mother truth. It’s not right!”
+
+And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostóv.
+
+“That’s twue, devil take it!” shouted Denísov, jumping up. “Now
+then, Wostóv, now then!”
+
+Rostóv, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one officer
+and then at the other.
+
+“No, gentlemen, no... you mustn’t think... I quite understand.
+You’re wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of
+the regiment I’d... Ah well, I’ll show that in action, and for me
+the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it’s true I’m to blame,
+to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?...”
+
+“Come, that’s right, Count!” cried the staff captain, turning
+round and clapping Rostóv on the shoulder with his big hand.
+
+“I tell you,” shouted Denísov, “he’s a fine fellow.”
+
+“That’s better, Count,” said the staff captain, beginning to
+address Rostóv by his title, as if in recognition of his confession.
+“Go and apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!”
+
+“Gentlemen, I’ll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,”
+said Rostóv in an imploring voice, “but I can’t apologize, by God I
+can’t, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little boy
+asking forgiveness?”
+
+Denísov began to laugh.
+
+“It’ll be worse for you. Bogdánich is vindictive and you’ll pay
+for your obstinacy,” said Kírsten.
+
+“No, on my word it’s not obstinacy! I can’t describe the feeling.
+I can’t...”
+
+“Well, it’s as you like,” said the staff captain. “And what has
+become of that scoundrel?” he asked Denísov.
+
+“He has weported himself sick, he’s to be stwuck off the list
+tomowwow,” muttered Denísov.
+
+“It is an illness, there’s no other way of explaining it,” said
+the staff captain.
+
+“Illness or not, he’d better not cwoss my path. I’d kill him!”
+shouted Denísov in a bloodthirsty tone.
+
+Just then Zherkóv entered the room.
+
+“What brings you here?” cried the officers turning to the newcomer.
+
+“We’re to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his
+whole army.”
+
+“It’s not true!”
+
+“I’ve seen him myself!”
+
+“What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?”
+
+“Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how
+did you come here?”
+
+“I’ve been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,
+Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on
+Mack’s arrival... What’s the matter, Rostóv? You look as if you’d
+just come out of a hot bath.”
+
+“Oh, my dear fellow, we’re in such a stew here these last two
+days.”
+
+The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
+Zherkóv. They were under orders to advance next day.
+
+“We’re going into action, gentlemen!”
+
+“Well, thank God! We’ve been sitting here too long!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Kutúzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges over
+the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October 23 the
+Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian
+baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling
+through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
+
+It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
+before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
+bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and
+then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could
+be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down below,
+the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed houses, its
+cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed jostling
+masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels, an island,
+and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of
+the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky left bank of the
+Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic background of green
+treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a convent stood out beyond a
+wild virgin pine forest, and far away on the other side of the Enns the
+enemy’s horse patrols could be discerned.
+
+Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in command of
+the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the country through
+his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvítski, who had been sent to
+the rearguard by the commander in chief, was sitting on the trail of a
+gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied him had handed him a knapsack
+and a flask, and Nesvítski was treating some officers to pies and real
+doppelkümmel. The officers gladly gathered round him, some on their
+knees, some squatting Turkish fashion on the wet grass.
+
+“Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It’s
+a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?” Nesvítski
+was saying.
+
+“Thank you very much, Prince,” answered one of the officers, pleased
+to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. “It’s a lovely
+place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a
+splendid house!”
+
+“Look, Prince,” said another, who would have dearly liked to take
+another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining the
+countryside—“See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look there
+in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something.
+They’ll ransack that castle,” he remarked with evident approval.
+
+“So they will,” said Nesvítski. “No, but what I should like,”
+added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, “would be
+to slip in over there.”
+
+He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed and
+gleamed.
+
+“That would be fine, gentlemen!”
+
+The officers laughed.
+
+“Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls
+among them. On my word I’d give five years of my life for it!”
+
+“They must be feeling dull, too,” said one of the bolder officers,
+laughing.
+
+Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out something to
+the general, who looked through his field glass.
+
+“Yes, so it is, so it is,” said the general angrily, lowering the
+field glass and shrugging his shoulders, “so it is! They’ll be fired
+on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?”
+
+On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and from
+their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant report of
+a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the crossing.
+
+Nesvítski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.
+
+“Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?” he said.
+
+“It’s a bad business,” said the general without answering him,
+“our men have been wasting time.”
+
+“Hadn’t I better ride over, your excellency?” asked Nesvítski.
+
+“Yes, please do,” answered the general, and he repeated the order
+that had already once been given in detail: “and tell the hussars
+that they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
+inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected.”
+
+“Very good,” answered Nesvítski.
+
+He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the knapsack
+and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.
+
+“I’ll really call in on the nuns,” he said to the officers who
+watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the
+hill.
+
+“Now then, let’s see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!”
+said the general, turning to an artillery officer. “Have a little fun
+to pass the time.”
+
+“Crew, to your guns!” commanded the officer.
+
+In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and began
+loading.
+
+“One!” came the command.
+
+Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
+metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
+troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little smoke
+showing the spot where it burst.
+
+The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone got
+up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as plainly
+visible as if but a stone’s throw away, and the movements of the
+approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came fully
+out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot
+and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous and
+spirited impression.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Two of the enemy’s shots had already flown across the bridge, where
+there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvítski, who had
+alighted from his horse and whose big body was jammed against the
+railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood a few
+steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each time Prince
+Nesvítski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him back again
+and pressed him against the railings, and all he could do was to smile.
+
+“What a fine fellow you are, friend!” said the Cossack to a convoy
+soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
+crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. “What a fellow!
+You can’t wait a moment! Don’t you see the general wants to pass?”
+
+But the convoyman took no notice of the word “general” and shouted
+at the soldiers who were blocking his way. “Hi there, boys! Keep to
+the left! Wait a bit.” But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to
+shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense
+mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvítski saw the rapid, noisy
+little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round the piles of
+the bridge chased each other along. Looking on the bridge he saw equally
+uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder straps, covered shakos,
+knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, under the shakos, faces with
+broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and
+feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks of the
+bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of
+white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with
+a type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along;
+sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot,
+an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry;
+and sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers’ or
+company’s baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on
+all sides, moved across the bridge.
+
+“It’s as if a dam had burst,” said the Cossack hopelessly. “Are
+there many more of you to come?”
+
+“A million all but one!” replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat,
+with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.
+
+“If he” (he meant the enemy) “begins popping at the bridge now,”
+said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, “you’ll forget to
+scratch yourself.”
+
+That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a cart.
+
+“Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?” said an
+orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.
+
+And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry soldiers who
+had evidently been drinking.
+
+“And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt
+end of his gun...” a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said
+gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.
+
+“Yes, the ham was just delicious...” answered another with a loud
+laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvítski did not learn who
+had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.
+
+“Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they’ll
+all be killed,” a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.
+
+“As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean,” said a young soldier
+with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, “I felt like
+dying of fright. I did, ‘pon my word, I got that frightened!” said
+he, as if bragging of having been frightened.
+
+That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had gone
+before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a German, and
+seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow with
+a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A woman with an unweaned
+baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl with bright red cheeks
+were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently these fugitives were
+allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes of all the soldiers
+turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was passing at foot pace
+all the soldiers’ remarks related to the two young ones. Every face
+bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts about the
+women.
+
+“Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!”
+
+“Sell me the missis,” said another soldier, addressing the German,
+who, angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast
+eyes.
+
+“See how smart she’s made herself! Oh, the devils!”
+
+“There, Fedótov, you should be quartered on them!”
+
+“I have seen as much before now, mate!”
+
+“Where are you going?” asked an infantry officer who was eating an
+apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.
+
+The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.
+
+“Take it if you like,” said the officer, giving the girl an apple.
+
+The girl smiled and took it. Nesvítski like the rest of the men on the
+bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed. When
+they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with the same
+kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens, the horses of
+a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the bridge, and the whole
+crowd had to wait.
+
+“And why are they stopping? There’s no proper order!” said the
+soldiers. “Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can’t you wait?
+It’ll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here’s an officer jammed
+in too”—different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men looked
+at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the bridge.
+
+Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvítski
+suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...
+something big, that splashed into the water.
+
+“Just see where it carries to!” a soldier near by said sternly,
+looking round at the sound.
+
+“Encouraging us to get along quicker,” said another uneasily.
+
+The crowd moved on again. Nesvítski realized that it was a cannon ball.
+
+“Hey, Cossack, my horse!” he said. “Now, then, you there! get out
+of the way! Make way!”
+
+With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting
+continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make way
+for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and those
+nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed still
+harder from behind.
+
+“Nesvítski, Nesvítski! you numskull!” came a hoarse voice from
+behind him.
+
+Nesvítski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but separated
+by the living mass of moving infantry, Váska Denísov, red and shaggy,
+with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak hanging jauntily
+over his shoulder.
+
+“Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!” shouted Denísov
+evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot
+whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a small
+bare hand as red as his face.
+
+“Ah, Váska!” joyfully replied Nesvítski. “What’s up with
+you?”
+
+“The squadwon can’t pass,” shouted Váska Denísov, showing his
+white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which
+twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting
+white foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his
+hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider let
+him. “What is this? They’re like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of the
+way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! I’ll hack
+you with my saber!” he shouted, actually drawing his saber from its
+scabbard and flourishing it.
+
+The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and
+Denísov joined Nesvítski.
+
+“How’s it you’re not drunk today?” said Nesvítski when the
+other had ridden up to him.
+
+“They don’t even give one time to dwink!” answered Váska
+Denísov. “They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they
+mean to fight, let’s fight. But the devil knows what this is.”
+
+“What a dandy you are today!” said Nesvítski, looking at
+Denísov’s new cloak and saddlecloth.
+
+Denísov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that diffused
+a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvítski’s nose.
+
+“Of course. I’m going into action! I’ve shaved, bwushed my teeth,
+and scented myself.”
+
+The imposing figure of Nesvítski followed by his Cossack, and
+the determination of Denísov who flourished his sword and shouted
+frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through
+to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
+bridge Nesvítski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the order,
+and having done this he rode back.
+
+Having cleared the way Denísov stopped at the end of the bridge.
+Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the
+ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw
+nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,
+resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
+front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to emerge
+on his side of it.
+
+The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the
+trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,
+estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually
+encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past them in
+regular order.
+
+“Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!” said one.
+
+“What good are they? They’re led about just for show!” remarked
+another.
+
+“Don’t kick up the dust, you infantry!” jested an hussar whose
+prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.
+
+“I’d like to put you on a two days’ march with a knapsack! Your
+fine cords would soon get a bit rubbed,” said an infantryman, wiping
+the mud off his face with his sleeve. “Perched up there, you’re more
+like a bird than a man.”
+
+“There now, Zíkin, they ought to put you on a horse. You’d look
+fine,” said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent under
+the weight of his knapsack.
+
+“Take a stick between your legs, that’ll suit you for a horse!”
+the hussar shouted back.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing
+together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last
+the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last
+battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denísov’s squadron of hussars
+remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could
+be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible from
+the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which the
+river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile away.
+At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of our
+Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the high
+ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These were the
+French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at a trot. All
+the officers and men of Denísov’s squadron, though they tried to talk
+of other things and to look in other directions, thought only of what
+was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking at the patches
+appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy’s troops.
+The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun was descending
+brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around it. It was calm, and
+at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of the enemy could be heard
+from the hill. There was no one now between the squadron and the enemy
+except a few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some seven hundred
+yards was all that separated them. The enemy ceased firing, and that
+stern, threatening, inaccessible, and intangible line which separates
+two hostile armies was all the more clearly felt.
+
+“One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing
+the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And
+what is there? Who is there?—there beyond that field, that tree, that
+roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear
+and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must
+be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will
+inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But you are
+strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such
+excitedly animated and healthy men.” So thinks, or at any rate
+feels, anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives
+a particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything that
+takes place at such moments.
+
+On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon rose,
+and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron. The
+officers who had been standing together rode off to their places. The
+hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence fell on the whole
+squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and at the squadron
+commander, awaiting the word of command. A second and a third cannon
+ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the hussars, but the balls
+with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads of the horsemen and fell
+somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not look round, but at the sound
+of each shot, as at the word of command, the whole squadron with its
+rows of faces so alike yet so different, holding its breath while the
+ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers
+without turning their heads glanced at one another, curious to see their
+comrades’ impression. Every face, from Denísov’s to that of the
+bugler, showed one common expression of conflict, irritation, and
+excitement, around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking
+at the soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet Mirónov ducked
+every time a ball flew past. Rostóv on the left flank, mounted on his
+Rook—a handsome horse despite its game leg—had the happy air of a
+schoolboy called up before a large audience for an examination in which
+he feels sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone
+with a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly
+he sat under fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same
+indication of something new and stern showed round the mouth.
+
+“Who’s that curtseying there? Cadet Miwónov! That’s not wight!
+Look at me,” cried Denísov who, unable to keep still on one spot,
+kept turning his horse in front of the squadron.
+
+The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Váska Denísov, and his whole
+short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in
+which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually
+did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second bottle; he
+was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds
+when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the sides of his
+good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling backwards in the
+saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in
+a hoarse voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode up to
+Kírsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a
+walk to meet him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always,
+only his eyes were brighter than usual.
+
+“Well, what about it?” said he to Denísov. “It won’t come to a
+fight. You’ll see—we shall retire.”
+
+“The devil only knows what they’re about!” muttered Denísov.
+“Ah, Wostóv,” he cried noticing the cadet’s bright face,
+“you’ve got it at last.”
+
+And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostóv
+felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge.
+Denísov galloped up to him.
+
+“Your excellency! Let us attack them! I’ll dwive them off.”
+
+“Attack indeed!” said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
+face as if driving off a troublesome fly. “And why are you stopping
+here? Don’t you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron
+back.”
+
+The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire without
+having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in the front
+line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted the farther side
+of the river.
+
+The two Pávlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the
+hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdánich Schubert, came
+up to Denísov’s squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostóv,
+without taking any notice of him although they were now meeting for the
+first time since their encounter concerning Telyánin. Rostóv, feeling
+that he was at the front and in the power of a man toward whom he now
+admitted that he had been to blame, did not lift his eyes from the
+colonel’s athletic back, his nape covered with light hair, and his red
+neck. It seemed to Rostóv that Bogdánich was only pretending not
+to notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet’s
+courage, so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it
+seemed to him that Bogdánich rode so near in order to show him his
+courage. Next he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a
+desperate attack just to punish him—Rostóv. Then he imagined how,
+after the attack, Bogdánich would come up to him as he lay wounded and
+would magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.
+
+The high-shouldered figure of Zherkóv, familiar to the Pávlograds as
+he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel.
+After his dismissal from headquarters Zherkóv had not remained in the
+regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front when he
+could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and had succeeded
+in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince Bagratión. He now
+came to his former chief with an order from the commander of the rear
+guard.
+
+“Colonel,” he said, addressing Rostóv’s enemy with an air of
+gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, “there is an order
+to stop and fire the bridge.”
+
+“An order to who?” asked the colonel morosely.
+
+“I don’t myself know ‘to who,’” replied the cornet in a
+serious tone, “but the prince told me to ‘go and tell the colonel
+that the hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.’”
+
+Zherkóv was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
+colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout Nesvítski
+came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his
+weight.
+
+“How’s this, Colonel?” he shouted as he approached. “I told you
+to fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are all
+beside themselves over there and one can’t make anything out.”
+
+The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to Nesvítski.
+
+“You spoke to me of inflammable material,” said he, “but you said
+nothing about firing it.”
+
+“But, my dear sir,” said Nesvítski as he drew up, taking off his
+cap and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,
+“wasn’t I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material
+had been put in position?”
+
+“I am not your ‘dear sir,’ Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell
+me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders
+strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would
+burn it, I could not know by the holy spirit!”
+
+“Ah, that’s always the way!” said Nesvítski with a wave of the
+hand. “How did you get here?” said he, turning to Zherkóv.
+
+“On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!”
+
+“You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer...” continued the colonel in an
+offended tone.
+
+“Colonel,” interrupted the officer of the suite, “You must be
+quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot.”
+
+The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the stout
+staff officer, and at Zherkóv, and he frowned.
+
+“I will the bridge fire,” he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
+that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would still
+do the right thing.
+
+Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to blame
+for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
+squadron, that in which Rostóv was serving under Denísov, to return to
+the bridge.
+
+“There, it’s just as I thought,” said Rostóv to himself. “He
+wishes to test me!” His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his
+face. “Let him see whether I am a coward!” he thought.
+
+Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
+appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostóv watched his enemy,
+the colonel, closely—to find in his face confirmation of his own
+conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostóv, and looked
+as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came the word
+of command.
+
+“Look sharp! Look sharp!” several voices repeated around him.
+
+Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
+hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The men
+were crossing themselves. Rostóv no longer looked at the colonel, he
+had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid
+that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse into
+an orderly’s charge, and he felt the blood rush to his heart with
+a thud. Denísov rode past him, leaning back and shouting something.
+Rostóv saw nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs
+catching and their sabers clattering.
+
+“Stretchers!” shouted someone behind him.
+
+Rostóv did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
+trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
+looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud, stumbled,
+and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.
+
+“At boss zides, Captain,” he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
+having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
+triumphant, cheerful face.
+
+Rostóv wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy and
+was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front
+the better. But Bogdánich, without looking at or recognizing Rostóv,
+shouted to him:
+
+“Who’s that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right! Come
+back, Cadet!” he cried angrily; and turning to Denísov, who, showing
+off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
+
+“Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount,” he said.
+
+“Oh, every bullet has its billet,” answered Váska Denísov, turning
+in his saddle.
+
+
+Meanwhile Nesvítski, Zherkóv, and the officer of the suite were
+standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small
+group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
+and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then at
+what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side—the blue
+uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as artillery.
+
+“Will they burn the bridge or not? Who’ll get there first? Will they
+get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot
+range and wipe them out?” These were the questions each man of the
+troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself
+with a sinking heart—watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright
+evening light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with
+their bayonets and guns.
+
+“Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!” said Nesvítski; “they are
+within grapeshot range now.”
+
+“He shouldn’t have taken so many men,” said the officer of the
+suite.
+
+“True enough,” answered Nesvítski; “two smart fellows could have
+done the job just as well.”
+
+“Ah, your excellency,” put in Zherkóv, his eyes fixed on the
+hussars, but still with that naïve air that made it impossible to know
+whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. “Ah, your excellency!
+How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the
+Vladímir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the
+squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. Our
+Bogdánich knows how things are done.”
+
+“There now!” said the officer of the suite, “that’s
+grapeshot.”
+
+He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being detached
+and hurriedly removed.
+
+On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
+appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at the
+moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
+reports one after another, and a third.
+
+“Oh! Oh!” groaned Nesvítski as if in fierce pain, seizing the
+officer of the suite by the arm. “Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,
+fallen!”
+
+“Two, I think.”
+
+“If I were Tsar I would never go to war,” said Nesvítski, turning
+away.
+
+The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
+uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again
+but at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
+bridge. But this time Nesvítski could not see what was happening there,
+as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in
+setting it on fire and the French batteries were now firing at them, no
+longer to hinder them but because the guns were trained and there was
+someone to fire at.
+
+The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the hussars
+got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot went too
+high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and
+knocked three of them over.
+
+Rostóv, absorbed by his relations with Bogdánich, had paused on the
+bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he
+had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
+bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like the
+other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a
+rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar nearest
+to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostóv ran up to him with
+the others. Again someone shouted, “Stretchers!” Four men seized the
+hussar and began lifting him.
+
+“Oooh! For Christ’s sake let me alone!” cried the wounded man, but
+still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
+
+Nicholas Rostóv turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed
+into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the
+sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep!
+How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the
+waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway
+blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and
+the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace
+and happiness... “I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I
+were there,” thought Rostóv. “In myself alone and in that sunshine
+there is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and
+this uncertainty and hurry... There—they are shouting again, and
+again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it,
+death, is here above me and around... Another instant and I shall never
+again see the sun, this water, that gorge!...”
+
+At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
+stretchers came into view before Rostóv. And the fear of death and of
+the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one
+feeling of sickening agitation.
+
+“O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
+me!” Rostóv whispered.
+
+The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their voices
+sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.
+
+“Well, fwiend? So you’ve smelt powdah!” shouted Váska Denísov
+just above his ear.
+
+“It’s all over; but I am a coward—yes, a coward!” thought
+Rostóv, and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting
+one foot, from the orderly and began to mount.
+
+“Was that grapeshot?” he asked Denísov.
+
+“Yes and no mistake!” cried Denísov. “You worked like wegular
+bwicks and it’s nasty work! An attack’s pleasant work! Hacking
+away at the dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them
+shooting at you like a target.”
+
+And Denísov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostóv, composed
+of the colonel, Nesvítski, Zherkóv, and the officer from the suite.
+
+“Well, it seems that no one has noticed,” thought Rostóv. And this
+was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation
+which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.
+
+“Here’s something for you to report,” said Zherkóv. “See if I
+don’t get promoted to a sublieutenancy.”
+
+“Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!” said the colonel
+triumphantly and gaily.
+
+“And if he asks about the losses?”
+
+“A trifle,” said the colonel in his bass voice: “two hussars
+wounded, and one knocked out,” he added, unable to restrain a happy
+smile, and pronouncing the phrase “knocked out” with ringing
+distinctness.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the command
+of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it,
+losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies,
+and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything that had
+been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men commanded
+by Kutúzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube, stopping where
+overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as
+necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its heavy equipment.
+There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the
+courage and endurance—acknowledged even by the enemy—with which the
+Russians fought, the only consequence of these actions was a yet more
+rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had escaped capture at Ulm and had
+joined Kutúzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and
+Kutúzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces. The
+defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an
+offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared in accord with the
+modern science of strategics, had been handed to Kutúzov when he was in
+Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable
+aim remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces that were
+advancing from Russia, without losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.
+
+On the twenty-eighth of October Kutúzov with his army crossed to the
+left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time
+with the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
+thirtieth he attacked Mortier’s division, which was on the left bank,
+and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken:
+banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, after a
+fortnight’s retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a fight
+had not only held the field but had repulsed the French. Though the
+troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of their number
+in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number of sick and
+wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a letter
+in which Kutúzov entrusted them to the humanity of the enemy; and
+though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems converted into military
+hospitals could no longer accommodate all the sick and wounded, yet the
+stand made at Krems and the victory over Mortier raised the spirits of
+the army considerably. Throughout the whole army and at headquarters
+most joyful though erroneous rumors were rife of the imaginary approach
+of columns from Russia, of some victory gained by the Austrians, and of
+the retreat of the frightened Bonaparte.
+
+Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the Austrian
+General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse had been
+wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a mark
+of the commander in chief’s special favor he was sent with the news of
+this victory to the Austrian court, now no longer at Vienna (which was
+threatened by the French) but at Brünn. Despite his apparently delicate
+build Prince Andrew could endure physical fatigue far better than many
+very muscular men, and on the night of the battle, having arrived
+at Krems excited but not weary, with dispatches from Dokhtúrov to
+Kutúzov, he was sent immediately with a special dispatch to Brünn.
+To be so sent meant not only a reward but an important step toward
+promotion.
+
+The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow that
+had fallen the previous day—the day of the battle. Reviewing his
+impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself the
+impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the send-off
+given him by the commander in chief and his fellow officers, Prince
+Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise enjoying the feelings of a
+man who has at length begun to attain a long-desired happiness. As soon
+as he closed his eyes his ears seemed filled with the rattle of the
+wheels and the sensation of victory. Then he began to imagine that
+the Russians were running away and that he himself was killed, but he
+quickly roused himself with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that
+this was not so but that on the contrary the French had run away. He
+again recalled all the details of the victory and his own calm courage
+during the battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark
+starry night was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was
+thawing in the sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides
+of the road were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.
+
+At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.
+The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the front
+cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each of
+the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were being
+jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he heard Russian
+words), others were eating bread; the more severely wounded looked
+silently, with the languid interest of sick children, at the envoy
+hurrying past them.
+
+Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what
+action they had been wounded. “Day before yesterday, on the Danube,”
+answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the
+soldier three gold pieces.
+
+“That’s for them all,” he said to the officer who came up.
+
+“Get well soon, lads!” he continued, turning to the soldiers.
+“There’s plenty to do still.”
+
+“What news, sir?” asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a
+conversation.
+
+“Good news!... Go on!” he shouted to the driver, and they galloped
+on.
+
+It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the paved
+streets of Brünn and found himself surrounded by high buildings, the
+lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that
+atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so attractive to a
+soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and sleepless night,
+Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt even more vigorous and
+alert than he had done the day before. Only his eyes gleamed feverishly
+and his thoughts followed one another with extraordinary clearness and
+rapidity. He again vividly recalled the details of the battle, no longer
+dim, but definite and in the concise form in which he imagined himself
+stating them to the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual
+questions that might be put to him and the answers he would give. He
+expected to be at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance
+to the palace, however, an official came running out to meet him, and
+learning that he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.
+
+“To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will find
+the adjutant on duty,” said the official. “He will conduct you to
+the Minister of War.”
+
+The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait, and went
+in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and bowing
+with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along a
+corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The
+adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any
+attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.
+
+Prince Andrew’s joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he
+approached the door of the minister’s room. He felt offended, and
+without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into
+one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly
+suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to despise
+the adjutant and the minister. “Away from the smell of powder, they
+probably think it easy to gain victories!” he thought. His eyes
+narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with
+peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened
+when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers
+and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three minutes
+taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each side of the
+minister’s bent bald head with its gray temples. He went on reading
+to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of the door and the
+sound of footsteps.
+
+“Take this and deliver it,” said he to his adjutant, handing him the
+papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.
+
+Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutúzov’s army
+interested the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he was
+concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger that
+impression. “But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” he
+thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together, arranged them
+evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual and distinctive
+head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the firm, intelligent
+expression on his face changed in a way evidently deliberate and
+habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial smile (which
+does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man who is
+continually receiving many petitioners one after another.
+
+“From General Field Marshal Kutúzov?” he asked. “I hope it is
+good news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was
+high time!”
+
+He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it
+with a mournful expression.
+
+“Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!” he exclaimed in German. “What a
+calamity! What a calamity!”
+
+Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and looked
+at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.
+
+“Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is
+not captured.” Again he pondered. “I am very glad you have brought
+good news, though Schmidt’s death is a heavy price to pay for the
+victory. His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I
+thank you! You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the
+parade. However, I will let you know.”
+
+The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,
+reappeared.
+
+“Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to
+see you,” he added, bowing his head.
+
+When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest
+and happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the
+indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant. The
+whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle seemed
+the memory of a remote event long past.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Prince Andrew stayed at Brünn with Bilíbin, a Russian acquaintance of
+his in the diplomatic service.
+
+“Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,”
+said Bilíbin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. “Franz, put the
+prince’s things in my bedroom,” said he to the servant who was
+ushering Bolkónski in. “So you’re a messenger of victory, eh?
+Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see.”
+
+After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat’s
+luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilíbin
+settled down comfortably beside the fire.
+
+After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived of
+all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, Prince
+Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious surroundings such
+as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant,
+after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in Russian
+(for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who would, he
+supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the Austrians which was
+then particularly strong.
+
+Bilíbin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle as
+Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but
+had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutúzov.
+Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high
+in the military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilíbin gave
+promise of rising in his diplomatic career. He was still a young man but
+no longer a young diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age
+of sixteen, had been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now held a rather
+important post in Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador
+in Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those many
+diplomats who are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities,
+avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one of those,
+who, liking work, knew how to do it, and despite his indolence would
+sometimes spend a whole night at his writing table. He worked well
+whatever the import of his work. It was not the question “What for?”
+but the question “How?” that interested him. What the diplomatic
+matter might be he did not care, but it gave him great pleasure to
+prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully, pointedly, and
+elegantly. Bilíbin’s services were valued not only for what he wrote,
+but also for his skill in dealing and conversing with those in the
+highest spheres.
+
+Bilíbin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be
+made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to say
+something striking and took part in a conversation only when that was
+possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original,
+finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the
+inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so
+that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to
+drawing room. And, in fact, Bilíbin’s witticisms were hawked about
+in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters
+considered important.
+
+His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always
+looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one’s fingers after a
+Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the principal play
+of expression on his face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds
+and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would descend and
+deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always
+twinkled and looked out straight.
+
+“Well, now tell me about your exploits,” said he.
+
+Bolkónski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the
+engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.
+
+“They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
+skittles,” said he in conclusion.
+
+Bilíbin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
+
+“Cependant, mon cher,” he remarked, examining his nails from a
+distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, “malgré la haute
+estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j’avoue que
+votre victoire n’est pas des plus victorieuses.” *
+
+     * “But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox
+     Russian army, I must say that your victory was not
+     particularly victorious.”
+
+
+He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in
+Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.
+
+“Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier
+and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your fingers!
+Where’s the victory?”
+
+“But seriously,” said Prince Andrew, “we can at any rate say
+without boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm...”
+
+“Why didn’t you capture one, just one, marshal for us?”
+
+“Because not everything happens as one expects or with the smoothness
+of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at their rear by
+seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in the afternoon.”
+
+“And why didn’t you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
+been there at seven in the morning,” returned Bilíbin with a smile.
+“You ought to have been there at seven in the morning.”
+
+“Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
+methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?” retorted Prince Andrew
+in the same tone.
+
+“I know,” interrupted Bilíbin, “you’re thinking it’s very
+easy to take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but
+still why didn’t you capture him? So don’t be surprised if not only
+the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and
+King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor
+secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of my
+joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to the
+Prater... True, we have no Prater here...”
+
+He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
+forehead.
+
+“It is now my turn to ask you ‘why?’ mon cher,” said Bolkónski.
+“I confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic
+subtleties here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can’t make it
+out. Mack loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke
+Karl give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutúzov
+alone at last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the
+invincibility of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care
+to hear the details.”
+
+“That’s just it, my dear fellow. You see it’s hurrah for the Tsar,
+for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but
+what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories? Bring
+us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one
+archduke’s as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only
+over a fire brigade of Bonaparte’s, that will be another story and
+we’ll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done
+on purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke
+Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its
+defense—as much as to say: ‘Heaven is with us, but heaven help you
+and your capital!’ The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you
+expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit
+that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived.
+It’s as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose
+you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a
+victory, what effect would that have on the general course of events?
+It’s too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!”
+
+“What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?”
+
+“Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schönbrunn, and the count,
+our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders.”
+
+After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and
+especially after having dined, Bolkónski felt that he could not take in
+the full significance of the words he heard.
+
+“Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,” Bilíbin continued,
+“and showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna
+was fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that
+your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can’t be
+received as a savior.”
+
+“Really I don’t care about that, I don’t care at all,” said
+Prince Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle
+before Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as
+the fall of Austria’s capital. “How is it Vienna was taken? What of
+the bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard
+reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?” he said.
+
+“Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is
+defending us—doing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending
+us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has not yet been
+taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and orders have been
+given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the
+mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would have spent a bad
+quarter of an hour between two fires.”
+
+“But still this does not mean that the campaign is over,” said
+Prince Andrew.
+
+“Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they
+daren’t say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign,
+it won’t be your skirmishing at Dürrenstein, or gunpowder at all,
+that will decide the matter, but those who devised it,” said Bilíbin
+quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and
+pausing. “The only question is what will come of the meeting between
+the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia
+joins the Allies, Austria’s hand will be forced and there will be war.
+If not it is merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of
+the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up.”
+
+“What an extraordinary genius!” Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
+clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, “and what
+luck the man has!”
+
+“Buonaparte?” said Bilíbin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead
+to indicate that he was about to say something witty. “Buonaparte?”
+he repeated, accentuating the u: “I think, however, now that he lays
+down laws for Austria at Schönbrunn, il faut lui faire grâce de
+l’u! * I shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply
+Bonaparte!”
+
+    * “We must let him off the u!”
+
+
+“But joking apart,” said Prince Andrew, “do you really think the
+campaign is over?”
+
+“This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is
+not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the
+first place because her provinces have been pillaged—they say the Holy
+Russian army loots terribly—her army is destroyed, her capital
+taken, and all this for the beaux yeux * of His Sardinian Majesty. And
+therefore—this is between ourselves—I instinctively feel that we
+are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France and
+projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately.”
+
+    * Fine eyes.
+
+“Impossible!” cried Prince Andrew. “That would be too base.”
+
+“If we live we shall see,” replied Bilíbin, his face again becoming
+smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.
+
+When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in a
+clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows, he
+felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far
+away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria’s treachery,
+Bonaparte’s new triumph, tomorrow’s levee and parade, and the
+audience with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.
+
+He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry
+and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now
+again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill,
+the French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode
+forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily whistling all around,
+and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done since
+childhood.
+
+He woke up...
+
+“Yes, that all happened!” he said, and, smiling happily to himself
+like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first
+thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be presented
+to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War, the polite
+Austrian adjutant, Bilíbin, and last night’s conversation. Having
+dressed for his attendance at court in full parade uniform, which he
+had not worn for a long time, he went into Bilíbin’s study fresh,
+animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged. In the study were four
+gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With Prince Hippolyte Kurágin,
+who was a secretary to the embassy, Bolkónski was already acquainted.
+Bilíbin introduced him to the others.
+
+The gentlemen assembled at Bilíbin’s were young, wealthy, gay society
+men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which Bilíbin, their
+leader, called les nôtres. * This set, consisting almost exclusively of
+diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had nothing to do with
+war or politics but related to high society, to certain women, and to
+the official side of the service. These gentlemen received Prince
+Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they did not extend to many. From
+politeness and to start conversation, they asked him a few questions
+about the army and the battle, and then the talk went off into merry
+jests and gossip.
+
+    * Ours.
+
+“But the best of it was,” said one, telling of the misfortune of
+a fellow diplomat, “that the Chancellor told him flatly that his
+appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.
+Can you fancy the figure he cut?...”
+
+“But the worst of it, gentlemen—I am giving Kurágin away to
+you—is that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is
+taking advantage of it!”
+
+Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over its
+arm. He began to laugh.
+
+“Tell me about that!” he said.
+
+“Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!” cried several voices.
+
+“You, Bolkónski, don’t know,” said Bilíbin turning to Prince
+Andrew, “that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of
+the Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing
+among the women!”
+
+“La femme est la compagne de l’homme,” * announced Prince
+Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.
+
+    * “Woman is man’s companion.”
+
+
+Bilíbin and the rest of “ours” burst out laughing in Hippolyte’s
+face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom—he had to
+admit—he had almost been jealous on his wife’s account, was the butt
+of this set.
+
+“Oh, I must give you a treat,” Bilíbin whispered to Bolkónski.
+“Kurágin is exquisite when he discusses politics—you should see his
+gravity!”
+
+He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began talking
+to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered round these
+two.
+
+“The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance,” began
+Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, “without
+expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless
+His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our alliance...
+
+“Wait, I have not finished...” he said to Prince Andrew, seizing
+him by the arm, “I believe that intervention will be stronger than
+nonintervention. And...” he paused. “Finally one cannot impute the
+nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end.”
+And he released Bolkónski’s arm to indicate that he had now quite
+finished.
+
+“Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
+mouth!” said Bilíbin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with
+satisfaction.
+
+Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was evidently
+distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain the wild
+laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.
+
+“Well now, gentlemen,” said Bilíbin, “Bolkónski is my guest in
+this house and in Brünn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I
+can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it would
+be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more difficult,
+and I beg you all to help me. Brünn’s attractions must be shown him.
+You can undertake the theater, I society, and you, Hippolyte, of course
+the women.”
+
+“We must let him see Amelie, she’s exquisite!” said one of
+“ours,” kissing his finger tips.
+
+“In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane
+interests,” said Bilíbin.
+
+“I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,
+gentlemen, it is already time for me to go,” replied Prince Andrew
+looking at his watch.
+
+“Where to?”
+
+“To the Emperor.”
+
+“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
+
+“Well, au revoir, Bolkónski! Au revoir, Prince! Come back early to
+dinner,” cried several voices. “We’ll take you in hand.”
+
+“When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the way
+that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated,” said Bilíbin,
+accompanying him to the hall.
+
+“I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I know the facts,
+I can’t,” replied Bolkónski, smiling.
+
+“Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for giving
+audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can’t do it, as
+you will see.”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he had
+been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into his
+face and just nodded to him with his long head. But after it was
+over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day ceremoniously informed
+Bolkónski that the Emperor desired to give him an audience. The Emperor
+Francis received him standing in the middle of the room. Before the
+conversation began Prince Andrew was struck by the fact that the Emperor
+seemed confused and blushed as if not knowing what to say.
+
+“Tell me, when did the battle begin?” he asked hurriedly.
+
+Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:
+“Was Kutúzov well? When had he left Krems?” and so on. The Emperor
+spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions—the
+answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not interest
+him.
+
+“At what o’clock did the battle begin?” asked the Emperor.
+
+“I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o’clock the battle began at
+the front, but at Dürrenstein, where I was, our attack began after
+five in the afternoon,” replied Bolkónski growing more animated and
+expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account, which
+he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the Emperor
+smiled and interrupted him.
+
+“How many miles?”
+
+“From where to where, Your Majesty?”
+
+“From Dürrenstein to Krems.”
+
+“Three and a half miles, Your Majesty.”
+
+“The French have abandoned the left bank?”
+
+“According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during the
+night.”
+
+“Is there sufficient forage in Krems?”
+
+“Forage has not been supplied to the extent...”
+
+The Emperor interrupted him.
+
+“At what o’clock was General Schmidt killed?”
+
+“At seven o’clock, I believe.”
+
+“At seven o’clock? It’s very sad, very sad!”
+
+The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew withdrew and
+was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides. Everywhere he
+saw friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday’s adjutant
+reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and offered him
+his own house. The Minister of War came up and congratulated him on the
+Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which the Emperor was conferring
+on him. The Empress’ chamberlain invited him to see Her Majesty. The
+archduchess also wished to see him. He did not know whom to answer, and
+for a few seconds collected his thoughts. Then the Russian ambassador
+took him by the shoulder, led him to the window, and began to talk to
+him.
+
+Contrary to Bilíbin’s forecast the news he had brought was joyfully
+received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutúzov was awarded
+the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army received rewards.
+Bolkónski was invited everywhere, and had to spend the whole morning
+calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries. Between four and five
+in the afternoon, having made all his calls, he was returning to
+Bilíbin’s house thinking out a letter to his father about the battle
+and his visit to Brünn. At the door he found a vehicle half full of
+luggage. Franz, Bilíbin’s man, was dragging a portmanteau with some
+difficulty out of the front door.
+
+Before returning to Bilíbin’s Prince Andrew had gone to a bookshop
+to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent some
+time in the shop.
+
+“What is it?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, your excellency!” said Franz, with difficulty rolling the
+portmanteau into the vehicle, “we are to move on still farther. The
+scoundrel is again at our heels!”
+
+“Eh? What?” asked Prince Andrew.
+
+Bilíbin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed excitement.
+
+“There now! Confess that this is delightful,” said he. “This
+affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without
+striking a blow!”
+
+Prince Andrew could not understand.
+
+“But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the
+town knows?”
+
+“I come from the archduchess’. I heard nothing there.”
+
+“And you didn’t see that everybody is packing up?”
+
+“I did not... What is it all about?” inquired Prince Andrew
+impatiently.
+
+“What’s it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that
+Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat
+is now rushing along the road to Brünn and will be here in a day or
+two.”
+
+“What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was
+mined?”
+
+“That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why.”
+
+Bolkónski shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It
+will be cut off,” said he.
+
+“That’s just it,” answered Bilíbin. “Listen! The French entered
+Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, those
+gentlemen, messieurs les maréchaux, * Murat, Lannes, and Belliard,
+mount and ride to the bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)
+‘Gentlemen,’ says one of them, ‘you know the Thabor Bridge is
+mined and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its
+head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up
+the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign the
+Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and take
+it!’ ‘Yes, let’s!’ say the others. And off they go and take the
+bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of the
+Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication.”
+
+    * The marshalls.
+
+“Stop jesting,” said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news
+grieved him and yet he was pleased.
+
+As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless
+situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead it
+out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift him from
+the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame!
+Listening to Bilíbin he was already imagining how on reaching the army
+he would give an opinion at the war council which would be the only one
+that could save the army, and how he alone would be entrusted with the
+executing of the plan.
+
+“Stop this jesting,” he said.
+
+“I am not jesting,” Bilíbin went on. “Nothing is truer or sadder.
+These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white handkerchiefs;
+they assure the officer on duty that they, the marshals, are on
+their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the
+tête-de-pont. * They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that
+the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with
+Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on. The
+officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace the officers, crack
+jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets to
+the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary material into
+the water, and approaches the tête-de-pont. At length appears the
+lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself.
+‘Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars!
+Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another’s hand.... The
+Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince Auersperg’s
+acquaintance.’ In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so
+bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly
+established intimacy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the
+sight of Murat’s mantle and ostrich plumes, qu’il n’y voit que du
+feu, et oublie celui qu’il devait faire faire sur l’ennemi!” *(2)
+In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilíbin did not forget to
+pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation. “The
+French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the
+bridge is taken! But what is best of all,” he went on, his excitement
+subsiding under the delightful interest of his own story, “is that the
+sergeant in charge of the cannon which was to give the signal to fire
+the mines and blow up the bridge, this sergeant, seeing that the French
+troops were running onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes
+stayed his hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than his general,
+goes up to Auersperg and says: ‘Prince, you are being deceived, here
+are the French!’ Murat, seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is
+allowed to speak, turns to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a
+true Gascon) and says: ‘I don’t recognize the world-famous Austrian
+discipline, if you allow a subordinate to address you like that!’ It
+was a stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and
+orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair
+of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
+rascality....”
+
+     * Bridgehead.
+
+     * (2) That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that
+     he ought to be firing at the enemy.
+
+“It may be treachery,” said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the
+gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of firing,
+and the glory that awaited him.
+
+“Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light,” replied
+Bilíbin. “It’s not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is
+just as at Ulm... it is...”—he seemed to be trying to find the right
+expression. “C’est... c’est du Mack. Nous sommes mackés (It is...
+it is a bit of Mack. We are Macked),” he concluded, feeling that he
+had produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
+hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
+slight smile he began to examine his nails.
+
+“Where are you off to?” he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had
+risen and was going toward his room.
+
+“I am going away.”
+
+“Where to?”
+
+“To the army.”
+
+“But you meant to stay another two days?”
+
+“But now I am off at once.”
+
+And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went to
+his room.
+
+“Do you know, mon cher,” said Bilíbin following him, “I have been
+thinking about you. Why are you going?”
+
+And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
+vanished from his face.
+
+Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.
+
+“Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back to
+the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, it is
+heroism!”
+
+“Not at all,” said Prince Andrew.
+
+“But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the other
+side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the contrary,
+is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no longer fit for
+anything else.... You have not been ordered to return and have not been
+dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and go with us wherever our
+ill luck takes us. They say we are going to Olmütz, and Olmütz is a
+very decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in my calèche.”
+
+“Do stop joking, Bilíbin,” cried Bolkónski.
+
+“I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are
+you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two
+things,” and the skin over his left temple puckered, “either you
+will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will
+share defeat and disgrace with Kutúzov’s whole army.”
+
+And Bilíbin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
+insoluble.
+
+“I cannot argue about it,” replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he
+thought: “I am going to save the army.”
+
+“My dear fellow, you are a hero!” said Bilíbin.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkónski
+set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would find it and
+fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.
+
+In Brünn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy
+baggage was already being dispatched to Olmütz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince
+Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was moving with
+great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstructed
+with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew
+took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack commander, and hungry and
+weary, making his way past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the
+commander in chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the
+position of the army reached him as he went along, and the appearance of
+the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed these rumors.
+
+“Cette armée russe que l’or de l’Angleterre a transportée des
+extrémités de l’univers, nous allons lui faire éprouver le même
+sort—(le sort de l’armée d’Ulm).” * He remembered these words
+in Bonaparte’s address to his army at the beginning of the campaign,
+and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a feeling
+of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. “And should there be nothing
+left but to die?” he thought. “Well, if need be, I shall do it no
+worse than others.”
+
+     * “That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of
+     the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same
+     fate—(the fate of the army at Ulm).”
+
+
+He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of detachments,
+carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and vehicles of all
+kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy road, three and
+sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and before, as far as ear
+could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, the creaking of carts
+and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, shouts, the
+urging of horses, and the swearing of soldiers, orderlies, and officers.
+All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be seen, some
+flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers
+sat waiting for something, and again soldiers straggling from their
+companies, crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or
+returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At
+each ascent or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the
+din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud
+pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,
+traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
+directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
+voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their faces
+that they despaired of the possibility of checking this disorder.
+
+“Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army,” thought Bolkónski,
+recalling Bilíbin’s words.
+
+Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up to
+a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse vehicle,
+evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available materials and
+looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet, and a calèche.
+A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat behind the
+apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. Prince Andrew rode up
+and was just putting his question to a soldier when his attention
+was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An
+officer in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was driving
+the woman’s vehicle for trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes
+of his whip fell on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed
+piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron
+and, waving her thin arms from under the woolen shawl, cried:
+
+“Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven’s sake... Protect
+me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
+Chasseurs.... They won’t let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
+our people...”
+
+“I’ll flatten you into a pancake!” shouted the angry officer to
+the soldier. “Turn back with your slut!”
+
+“Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?” screamed the
+doctor’s wife.
+
+“Kindly let this cart pass. Don’t you see it’s a woman?” said
+Prince Andrew riding up to the officer.
+
+The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
+soldier. “I’ll teach you to push on!... Back!”
+
+“Let them pass, I tell you!” repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
+lips.
+
+“And who are you?” cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy
+rage, “who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander here,
+not you! Go back or I’ll flatten you into a pancake,” repeated he.
+This expression evidently pleased him.
+
+“That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp,” came a voice
+from behind.
+
+Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
+tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
+championship of the doctor’s wife in her queer trap might expose him
+to what he dreaded more than anything in the world—to ridicule; but
+his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence
+Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised
+his riding whip.
+
+“Kind...ly let—them—pass!”
+
+The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
+
+“It’s all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there’s
+this disorder,” he muttered. “Do as you like.”
+
+Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
+doctor’s wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with
+a sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
+galloped on to the village where he was told who the commander in chief
+was.
+
+On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
+intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to sort
+out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his mind. “This
+is a mob of scoundrels and not an army,” he was thinking as he went
+up to the window of the first house, when a familiar voice called him by
+name.
+
+He turned round. Nesvítski’s handsome face looked out of the little
+window. Nesvítski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something, and
+flourishing his arm, called him to enter.
+
+“Bolkónski! Bolkónski!... Don’t you hear? Eh? Come quick...” he
+shouted.
+
+Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvítski and another adjutant
+having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
+had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm.
+This was particularly noticeable on Nesvítski’s usually laughing
+countenance.
+
+“Where is the commander in chief?” asked Bolkónski.
+
+“Here, in that house,” answered the adjutant.
+
+“Well, is it true that it’s peace and capitulation?” asked
+Nesvítski.
+
+“I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I could
+do to get here.”
+
+“And we, my dear boy! It’s terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,
+we’re getting it still worse,” said Nesvítski. “But sit down and
+have something to eat.”
+
+“You won’t be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
+Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is,” said the other
+adjutant.
+
+“Where are headquarters?”
+
+“We are to spend the night in Znaim.”
+
+“Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses,” said
+Nesvítski. “They’ve made up splendid packs for me—fit to cross
+the Bohemian mountains with. It’s a bad lookout, old fellow! But
+what’s the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that,” he
+added, noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.
+
+“It’s nothing,” replied Prince Andrew.
+
+He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor’s wife and
+the convoy officer.
+
+“What is the commander in chief doing here?” he asked.
+
+“I can’t make out at all,” said Nesvítski.
+
+“Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,
+abominable, quite abominable!” said Prince Andrew, and he went off to
+the house where the commander in chief was.
+
+Passing by Kutúzov’s carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of
+his suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
+Andrew entered the passage. Kutúzov himself, he was told, was in the
+house with Prince Bagratión and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian
+general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlóvski was
+squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs turned
+up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards. Kozlóvski’s
+face looked worn—he too had evidently not slept all night. He glanced
+at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to him.
+
+“Second line... have you written it?” he continued dictating to the
+clerk. “The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian...”
+
+“One can’t write so fast, your honor,” said the clerk, glancing
+angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlóvski.
+
+Through the door came the sounds of Kutúzov’s voice, excited and
+dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
+sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlóvski looked at him, the
+disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and
+Kozlóvski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the commander
+in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding the
+horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that something important and
+disastrous was about to happen.
+
+He turned to Kozlóvski with urgent questions.
+
+“Immediately, Prince,” said Kozlóvski. “Dispositions for
+Bagratión.”
+
+“What about capitulation?”
+
+“Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle.”
+
+Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.
+Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened, and
+Kutúzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway.
+Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutúzov but the expression of
+the commander in chief’s one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied
+with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He
+looked straight at his adjutant’s face without recognizing him.
+
+“Well, have you finished?” said he to Kozlóvski.
+
+“One moment, your excellency.”
+
+Bagratión, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
+impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in chief.
+
+“I have the honor to present myself,” repeated Prince Andrew rather
+loudly, handing Kutúzov an envelope.
+
+“Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!”
+
+Kutúzov went out into the porch with Bagratión.
+
+“Well, good-by, Prince,” said he to Bagratión. “My blessing, and
+may Christ be with you in your great endeavor!”
+
+His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left
+hand he drew Bagratión toward him, and with his right, on which he wore
+a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently
+habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagratión kissed him on the
+neck instead.
+
+“Christ be with you!” Kutúzov repeated and went toward his
+carriage. “Get in with me,” said he to Bolkónski.
+
+“Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain
+with Prince Bagratión’s detachment.”
+
+“Get in,” said Kutúzov, and noticing that Bolkónski still delayed,
+he added: “I need good officers myself, need them myself!”
+
+They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.
+
+“There is still much, much before us,” he said, as if with an old
+man’s penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkónski’s
+mind. “If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,”
+he added as if speaking to himself.
+
+Prince Andrew glanced at Kutúzov’s face only a foot distant from him
+and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near
+his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty
+eye socket. “Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men’s
+death,” thought Bolkónski.
+
+“That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,” he said.
+
+Kutúzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been
+saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying
+on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew.
+There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he
+questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his interview with the
+Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems
+affair, and about some ladies they both knew.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+On November 1 Kutúzov had received, through a spy, news that the army
+he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that
+the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in
+immense force upon Kutúzov’s line of communication with the troops
+that were arriving from Russia. If Kutúzov decided to remain at Krems,
+Napoleon’s army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him
+off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he
+would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutúzov decided
+to abandon the road connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia,
+he would have to march with no road into unknown parts of the Bohemian
+mountains, defending himself against superior forces of the enemy and
+abandoning all hope of a junction with Buxhöwden. If Kutúzov decided
+to retreat along the road from Krems to Olmütz, to unite with the
+troops arriving from Russia, he risked being forestalled on that road
+by the French who had crossed the Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his
+baggage and transport, having to accept battle on the march against an
+enemy three times as strong, who would hem him in from two sides.
+
+Kutúzov chose this latter course.
+
+The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
+advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles
+off on the line of Kutúzov’s retreat. If he reached Znaim before the
+French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the
+French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army to a
+disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to forestall
+the French with his whole army was impossible. The road for the French
+from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the
+Russians from Krems to Znaim.
+
+The night he received the news, Kutúzov sent Bagratión’s vanguard,
+four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the Krems-Znaim
+to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagratión was to make this march without
+resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he
+succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as
+possible. Kutúzov himself with all his transport took the road to
+Znaim.
+
+Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills, with his
+hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as stragglers
+by the way, Bagratión came out on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrünn
+a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrünn from
+Vienna. Kutúzov with his transport had still to march for some days
+before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagratión with his four thousand
+hungry, exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy army
+that came upon him at Hollabrünn, which was clearly impossible. But
+a freak of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick
+that had placed the Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without
+a fight led Murat to try to deceive Kutúzov in a similar way. Meeting
+Bagratión’s weak detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be
+Kutúzov’s whole army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited
+the arrival of the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna,
+and with this object offered a three days’ truce on condition that
+both armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared
+that negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he
+therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count
+Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed
+Murat’s emissary and retired, leaving Bagratión’s division
+exposed. Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace
+negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days’ truce.
+Bagratión replied that he was not authorized either to accept or refuse
+a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutúzov to report the offer he had
+received.
+
+A truce was Kutúzov’s sole chance of gaining time, giving
+Bagratión’s exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport and
+heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French) advance
+if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the only, and
+a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On receiving the news
+he immediately dispatched Adjutant General Wintzingerode, who was in
+attendance on him, to the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not merely
+to agree to the truce but also to offer terms of capitulation, and
+meanwhile Kutúzov sent his adjutants back to hasten to the utmost the
+movements of the baggage trains of the entire army along the Krems-Znaim
+road. Bagratión’s exhausted and hungry detachment, which alone
+covered this movement of the transport and of the whole army, had to
+remain stationary in face of an enemy eight times as strong as itself.
+
+Kutúzov’s expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which were
+in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to pass,
+and also that Murat’s mistake would very soon be discovered, proved
+correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schönbrunn, sixteen miles
+from Hollabrünn) received Murat’s dispatch with the proposal of a
+truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the following
+letter to Murat:
+
+Schönbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,
+
+at eight o’clock in the morning
+
+To PRINCE MURAT,
+
+I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command only
+my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice without my
+order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign. Break
+the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him that the
+general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so, and that no
+one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.
+
+If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I will
+ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the Russian
+army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and artillery.
+
+The Russian Emperor’s aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are
+nothing when they have no powers; this one had none.... The Austrians
+let themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna bridge, you are
+letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor.
+
+NAPOLEON
+
+Bonaparte’s adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to
+Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all
+the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim
+escape, and Bagratión’s four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
+dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first time
+for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was in store
+for him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Between three and four o’clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who
+had persisted in his request to Kutúzov, arrived at Grunth and reported
+himself to Bagratión. Bonaparte’s adjutant had not yet reached
+Murat’s detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In Bagratión’s
+detachment no one knew anything of the general position of affairs. They
+talked of peace but did not believe in its possibility; others talked
+of a battle but also disbelieved in the nearness of an engagement.
+Bagratión, knowing Bolkónski to be a favorite and trusted adjutant,
+received him with distinction and special marks of favor, explaining to
+him that there would probably be an engagement that day or the next, and
+giving him full liberty to remain with him during the battle or to join
+the rearguard and have an eye on the order of retreat, “which is also
+very important.”
+
+“However, there will hardly be an engagement today,” said Bagratión
+as if to reassure Prince Andrew.
+
+“If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a
+medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he
+wishes to stay with me, let him... he’ll be of use here if he’s a
+brave officer,” thought Bagratión. Prince Andrew, without replying,
+asked the prince’s permission to ride round the position to see the
+disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be sent
+to execute an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly dressed
+man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of speaking
+French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince Andrew.
+
+On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who
+seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors, benches,
+and fencing from the village.
+
+“There now, Prince! We can’t stop those fellows,” said the staff
+officer pointing to the soldiers. “The officers don’t keep them in
+hand. And there,” he pointed to a sutler’s tent, “they crowd in
+and sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it’s full
+again. I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won’t take a
+moment.”
+
+“Yes, let’s go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese,”
+said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.
+
+“Why didn’t you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you
+something.”
+
+They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed and
+weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.
+
+“Now what does this mean, gentlemen?” said the staff officer, in
+the reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more
+than once. “You know it won’t do to leave your posts like this.
+The prince gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you,
+Captain,” and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer who
+without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to dry),
+in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not altogether
+comfortably.
+
+“Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Captain Túshin?” he
+continued. “One would think that as an artillery officer you would set
+a good example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be
+sounded and you’ll be in a pretty position without your boots!” (The
+staff officer smiled.) “Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of
+you, all!” he added in a tone of command.
+
+Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery officer
+Túshin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged foot to
+the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent, kindly eyes
+from Prince Andrew to the staff officer.
+
+“The soldiers say it feels easier without boots,” said Captain
+Túshin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently wishing
+to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt that his
+jest was unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.
+
+“Kindly return to your posts,” said the staff officer trying to
+preserve his gravity.
+
+Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer’s small figure.
+There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather comic,
+but extremely attractive.
+
+The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode on.
+
+Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking
+soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left some
+entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which showed up
+red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt sleeves despite
+the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host of white ants;
+spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown up from behind the
+bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer rode up, looked at
+the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it they came upon some
+dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by others, who ran from the
+entrenchment. They had to hold their noses and put their horses to a
+trot to escape from the poisoned atmosphere of these latrines.
+
+“Voilà l’agrément des camps, monsieur le prince,” * said the
+staff officer.
+
+    * “This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince.”
+
+
+They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could already be
+seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the position.
+
+“That’s our battery,” said the staff officer indicating the
+highest point. “It’s in charge of the queer fellow we saw without
+his boots. You can see everything from there; let’s go there,
+Prince.”
+
+“Thank you very much, I will go on alone,” said Prince Andrew,
+wishing to rid himself of this staff officer’s company, “please
+don’t trouble yourself further.”
+
+The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.
+
+The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly and
+cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had been
+in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road seven
+miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and alarm
+could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French lines the
+more confident was the appearance of our troops. The soldiers in
+their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major and company
+officers were counting the men, poking the last man in each section in
+the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers scattered over
+the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and were building
+shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the fires sat others,
+dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg bands or mending
+boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and porridge cookers.
+In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly
+at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample, which a quartermaster
+sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an officer who sat on a log
+before his shelter, had been tasted.
+
+Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,
+crowded round a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting
+a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to him. The
+soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with reverential faces,
+emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and walked away from
+the sergeant major with brightened expressions, licking their lips and
+wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats. All their faces were
+as serene as if all this were happening at home awaiting peaceful
+encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before an action in
+which at least half of them would be left on the field. After passing a
+chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiers—fine fellows
+busy with similar peaceful affairs—near the shelter of the regimental
+commander, higher than and different from the others, Prince Andrew came
+out in front of a platoon of grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two
+soldiers held him while two others were flourishing their switches and
+striking him regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally.
+A stout major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the
+screams kept repeating:
+
+“It’s a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,
+honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor in
+him, he’s a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!”
+
+So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but unnatural
+screams, continued.
+
+“Go on, go on!” said the major.
+
+A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his face
+stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the adjutant
+as he rode by.
+
+Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our front
+line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and left flanks,
+but in the center where the men with a flag of truce had passed that
+morning, the lines were so near together that the men could see one
+another’s faces and speak to one another. Besides the soldiers who
+formed the picket line on either side, there were many curious onlookers
+who, jesting and laughing, stared at their strange foreign enemies.
+
+Since early morning—despite an injunction not to approach the picket
+line—the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away. The
+soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a curiosity,
+no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the sight-seers and
+grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew halted to have a look
+at the French.
+
+“Look! Look there!” one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a
+Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer and
+was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. “Hark to him
+jabbering! Fine, isn’t it? It’s all the Frenchy can do to keep up
+with him. There now, Sídorov!”
+
+“Wait a bit and listen. It’s fine!” answered Sídorov, who was
+considered an adept at French.
+
+The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dólokhov. Prince Andrew
+recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying. Dólokhov
+had come from the left flank where their regiment was stationed, with
+his captain.
+
+“Now then, go on, go on!” incited the officer, bending forward and
+trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible to
+him. “More, please: more! What’s he saying?”
+
+Dólokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot
+dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about the
+campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the Russians, was
+trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and had fled all
+the way from Ulm, while Dólokhov maintained that the Russians had not
+surrendered but had beaten the French.
+
+“We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you off,”
+said Dólokhov.
+
+“Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!” said
+the French grenadier.
+
+The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
+
+“We’ll make you dance as we did under Suvórov...,” * said
+Dólokhov.
+
+    * “On vous fera danser.”
+
+
+“Qu’ est-ce qu’il chante?” * asked a Frenchman.
+
+    * “What’s he singing about?”
+
+
+“It’s ancient history,” said another, guessing that it referred to
+a former war. “The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
+others...”
+
+“Bonaparte...” began Dólokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
+
+“Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacré nom...!” cried he angrily.
+
+“The devil skin your Emperor.”
+
+And Dólokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s Russian and shouldering
+his musket walked away.
+
+“Let us go, Iván Lukích,” he said to the captain.
+
+“Ah, that’s the way to talk French,” said the picket soldiers.
+“Now, Sídorov, you have a try!”
+
+Sídorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless
+sounds very fast: “Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaská,” he said,
+trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.
+
+“Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!” came peals of such healthy
+and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the French
+involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed to be
+to unload the muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as
+quickly as possible.
+
+But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
+entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
+confronted one another as before.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left, Prince
+Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff officer had
+told him the whole field could be seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped
+beside the farthest of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an
+artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at attention when the
+officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his measured, monotonous pacing.
+Behind the guns were their limbers and still farther back picket ropes
+and artillerymen’s bonfires. To the left, not far from the farthest
+cannon, was a small, newly constructed wattle shed from which came the
+sound of officers’ voices in eager conversation.
+
+It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the
+greater part of the enemy’s opened out from this battery. Just facing
+it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schön Grabern
+could be seen, and in three places to left and right the French troops
+amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of whom were
+evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left from
+that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but it
+was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye. Our right flank was
+posted on a rather steep incline which dominated the French position.
+Our infantry were stationed there, and at the farthest point the
+dragoons. In the center, where Túshin’s battery stood and from which
+Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the easiest and most
+direct descent and ascent to the brook separating us from Schön
+Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse, in which smoked
+the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood. The French line was
+wider than ours, and it was plain that they could easily outflank us
+on both sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it
+difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew took
+out his notebook and, leaning on the cannon, sketched a plan of the
+position. He made some notes on two points, intending to mention them to
+Bagratión. His idea was, first, to concentrate all the artillery in the
+center, and secondly, to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the
+dip. Prince Andrew, being always near the commander in chief, closely
+following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly studying
+historical accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the
+course of events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He
+imagined only important possibilities: “If the enemy attacks the right
+flank,” he said to himself, “the Kiev grenadiers and the Podólsk
+chasseurs must hold their position till reserves from the center
+come up. In that case the dragoons could successfully make a flank
+counterattack. If they attack our center we, having the center battery
+on this high ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and
+retreat to the dip by echelons.” So he reasoned.... All the time
+he had been beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers
+distinctly, but as often happens had not understood a word of what they
+were saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the
+shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.
+
+“No, friend,” said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, a
+familiar voice, “what I say is that if it were possible to know
+what is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That’s so,
+friend.”
+
+Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: “Afraid or not, you can’t
+escape it anyhow.”
+
+“All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people,” said a third
+manly voice interrupting them both. “Of course you artillery men are
+very wise, because you can take everything along with you—vodka and
+snacks.”
+
+And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
+laughed.
+
+“Yes, one is afraid,” continued the first speaker, he of the
+familiar voice. “One is afraid of the unknown, that’s what it is.
+Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is
+no sky but only an atmosphere.”
+
+The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
+
+“Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Túshin,” it said.
+
+“Why,” thought Prince Andrew, “that’s the captain who stood up
+in the sutler’s hut without his boots.” He recognized the agreeable,
+philosophizing voice with pleasure.
+
+“Some herb vodka? Certainly!” said Túshin. “But still, to
+conceive a future life...”
+
+He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air; nearer and
+nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon ball, as if it
+had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded into the ground near
+the shed with super human force, throwing up a mass of earth. The ground
+seemed to groan at the terrible impact.
+
+And immediately Túshin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth
+and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed
+followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer who
+hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
+looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes
+ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
+motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was
+a battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
+mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
+small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
+probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
+not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a report.
+The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and galloped back
+to Grunth to find Prince Bagratión. He heard the cannonade behind him
+growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our guns had begun to reply.
+From the bottom of the slope, where the parleys had taken place, came
+the report of musketry.
+
+Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte’s stern letter,
+and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at once
+moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the Russian
+wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the Emperor to
+crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.
+
+“It has begun. Here it is!” thought Prince Andrew, feeling the
+blood rush to his heart. “But where and how will my Toulon present
+itself?”
+
+Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and drinking
+vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same rapid
+movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets ready,
+and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that filled his
+heart. “It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but enjoyable!” was what
+the face of each soldier and each officer seemed to say.
+
+Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up, he saw,
+in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming toward him.
+The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding a
+white horse, was Prince Bagratión. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for
+him to come up; Prince Bagratión reined in his horse and recognizing
+Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while Prince Andrew
+told him what he had seen.
+
+The feeling, “It has begun! Here it is!” was seen even on Prince
+Bagratión’s hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
+Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face
+and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking
+and feeling at that moment. “Is there anything at all behind that
+impassive face?” Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince
+Bagratión bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew
+told him, and said, “Very good!” in a tone that seemed to imply that
+everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he
+had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride, spoke
+quickly. Prince Bagratión, uttering his words with an Oriental accent,
+spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that there was no
+need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the direction
+of Túshin’s battery. Prince Andrew followed with the suite. Behind
+Prince Bagratión rode an officer of the suite, the prince’s personal
+adjutant, Zherkóv, an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty,
+riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian—an accountant who had
+asked permission to be present at the battle out of curiosity. The
+accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around him with a naïve
+smile of satisfaction and presented a strange appearance among the
+hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he jolted on
+his horse with a convoy officer’s saddle.
+
+“He wants to see a battle,” said Zherkóv to Bolkónski, pointing
+to the accountant, “but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach
+already.”
+
+“Oh, leave off!” said the accountant with a beaming but rather
+cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of Zherkóv’s
+joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really was.
+
+“It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince,” said the staff officer.
+(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a
+prince, but could not get it quite right.)
+
+By this time they were all approaching Túshin’s battery, and a ball
+struck the ground in front of them.
+
+“What’s that that has fallen?” asked the accountant with a naïve
+smile.
+
+“A French pancake,” answered Zherkóv.
+
+“So that’s what they hit with?” asked the accountant. “How
+awful!”
+
+He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking
+when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which suddenly
+ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding
+a little to their right and behind the accountant, crashed to earth with
+his horse. Zherkóv and the staff officer bent over their saddles and
+turned their horses away. The accountant stopped, facing the Cossack,
+and examined him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the
+horse still struggled.
+
+Prince Bagratión screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing the
+cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to say,
+“Is it worth while noticing trifles?” He reined in his horse with
+the care of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his
+saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber of
+a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story of
+Suvórov giving his saber to Bagratión in Italy, and the recollection
+was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had reached the battery
+at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined the battlefield.
+
+“Whose company?” asked Prince Bagratión of an artilleryman standing
+by the ammunition wagon.
+
+He asked, “Whose company?” but he really meant, “Are you
+frightened here?” and the artilleryman understood him.
+
+“Captain Túshin’s, your excellency!” shouted the red-haired,
+freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.
+
+“Yes, yes,” muttered Bagratión as if considering something, and he
+rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.
+
+As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his
+suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see
+the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its
+former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding
+a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with
+a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon’s mouth. The short,
+round-shouldered Captain Túshin, stumbling over the tail of the gun
+carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked out
+shading his eyes with his small hand.
+
+“Lift it two lines more and it will be just right,” cried he in a
+feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill-suited to
+his weak figure. “Number Two!” he squeaked. “Fire, Medvédev!”
+
+Bagratión called to him, and Túshin, raising three fingers to his cap
+with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military salute
+but like a priest’s benediction, approached the general. Though
+Túshin’s guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was
+firing incendiary balls at the village of Schön Grabern visible just
+opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.
+
+No one had given Túshin orders where and at what to fire, but after
+consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchénko, for whom he had great
+respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the
+village. “Very good!” said Bagratión in reply to the officer’s
+report, and began deliberately to examine the whole battlefield extended
+before him. The French had advanced nearest on our right. Below the
+height on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow where the
+rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of musketry was
+heard, and much farther to the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of
+the suite pointed out to Bagratión a French column that was outflanking
+us. To the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince
+Bagratión ordered two battalions from the center to be sent to
+reinforce the right flank. The officer of the suite ventured to remark
+to the prince that if these battalions went away, the guns would remain
+without support. Prince Bagratión turned to the officer and with his
+dull eyes looked at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the
+officer’s remark was just and that really no answer could be made to
+it. But at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the
+commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses
+of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was in
+disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagratión
+bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off at a walk to
+the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with orders to attack the
+French. But this adjutant returned half an hour later with the news that
+the commander of the dragoons had already retreated beyond the dip in
+the ground, as a heavy fire had been opened on him and he was losing
+men uselessly, and so had hastened to throw some sharpshooters into the
+wood.
+
+“Very good!” said Bagratión.
+
+As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also, and
+as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go there
+himself, Prince Bagratión sent Zherkóv to tell the general in command
+(the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutúzov at Braunau) that
+he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow in the rear,
+as the right flank would probably not be able to withstand the enemy’s
+attack very long. About Túshin and the battalion that had been in
+support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened
+attentively to Bagratión’s colloquies with the commanding officers
+and the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders
+were really given, but that Prince Bagratión tried to make it appear
+that everything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of
+subordinate commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at least
+in accord with his intentions. Prince Andrew noticed, however, that
+though what happened was due to chance and was independent of the
+commander’s will, owing to the tact Bagratión showed, his presence
+was very valuable. Officers who approached him with disturbed
+countenances became calm; soldiers and officers greeted him gaily, grew
+more cheerful in his presence, and were evidently anxious to display
+their courage before him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Prince Bagratión, having reached the highest point of our right flank,
+began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard but where
+on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to
+the hollow the less they could see but the more they felt the nearness
+of the actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded men. One with a
+bleeding head and no cap was being dragged along by two soldiers who
+supported him under the arms. There was a gurgle in his throat and he
+was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat or
+mouth. Another was walking sturdily by himself but without his musket,
+groaning aloud and swinging his arm which had just been hurt, while
+blood from it was streaming over his greatcoat as from a bottle. He had
+that moment been wounded and his face showed fear rather than suffering.
+Crossing a road they descended a steep incline and saw several men
+lying on the ground; they also met a crowd of soldiers some of whom were
+unwounded. The soldiers were ascending the hill breathing heavily, and
+despite the general’s presence were talking loudly and gesticulating.
+In front of them rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the
+smoke, and an officer catching sight of Bagratión rushed shouting after
+the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagratión rode up
+to the ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning
+the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked with
+smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with it. Some
+were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the touchpans or
+taking charges from their pouches, while others were firing, though who
+they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke which there was no
+wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and whistling of bullets were
+often heard. “What is this?” thought Prince Andrew approaching the
+crowd of soldiers. “It can’t be an attack, for they are not moving;
+it can’t be a square—for they are not drawn up for that.”
+
+The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
+pleasant smile—his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
+giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagratión and welcomed him as
+a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had
+been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
+repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack
+had been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
+occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know what
+had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to him, and
+could not say with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or his
+regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at the commencement
+of the action balls and shells began flying all over his regiment and
+hitting men and that afterwards someone had shouted “Cavalry!” and
+our men had begun firing. They were still firing, not at the cavalry
+which had disappeared, but at French infantry who had come into the
+hollow and were firing at our men. Prince Bagratión bowed his head as a
+sign that this was exactly what he had desired and expected. Turning
+to his adjutant he ordered him to bring down the two battalions of the
+Sixth Chasseurs whom they had just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by
+the changed expression on Prince Bagratión’s face at this moment. It
+expressed the concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of
+a man who on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water.
+The dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation
+of profound thought. The round, steady, hawk’s eyes looked before him
+eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although his
+movements were still slow and measured.
+
+The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagratión, entreating
+him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.
+“Please, your excellency, for God’s sake!” he kept saying,
+glancing for support at an officer of the suite who turned away
+from him. “There, you see!” and he drew attention to the bullets
+whistling, singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the
+tone of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who
+has picked up an ax: “We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister
+your hands.” He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and his
+half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words. The staff
+officer joined in the colonel’s appeals, but Bagratión did not reply;
+he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to give room
+for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking, the curtain
+of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising wind, began
+to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible hand, and the
+hill opposite, with the French moving about on it, opened out before
+them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French column advancing
+against them and winding down over the uneven ground. One could already
+see the soldiers’ shaggy caps, distinguish the officers from the men,
+and see the standard flapping against its staff.
+
+“They march splendidly,” remarked someone in Bagratión’s suite.
+
+The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The clash
+would take place on this side of it...
+
+The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly formed up
+and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the laggards, came
+two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had
+reached Bagratión, the weighty tread of the mass of men marching in
+step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to Bagratión, marched
+a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a stupid and happy
+expression—the same man who had rushed out of the wattle shed. At that
+moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how dashing a fellow he
+would appear as he passed the commander.
+
+With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly with
+his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to his full
+height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with the heavy
+tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He carried close
+to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and not like a real
+weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and now back at the men
+without losing step, his whole powerful body turning flexibly. It was as
+if all the powers of his soul were concentrated on passing the commander
+in the best possible manner, and feeling that he was doing it well he
+was happy. “Left... left... left...” he seemed to repeat to himself
+at each alternate step; and in time to this, with stern but varied
+faces, the wall of soldiers burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched
+in step, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be
+repeating to himself at each alternate step, “Left... left...
+left...” A fat major skirted a bush, puffing and falling out of
+step; a soldier who had fallen behind, his face showing alarm at his
+defection, ran at a trot, panting to catch up with his company. A cannon
+ball, cleaving the air, flew over the heads of Bagratión and his suite,
+and fell into the column to the measure of “Left... left!” “Close
+up!” came the company commander’s voice in jaunty tones. The
+soldiers passed in a semicircle round something where the ball had
+fallen, and an old trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who
+had stopped beside the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling
+into step with a hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous
+silence and the regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one
+seemed to hear left... left... left.
+
+“Well done, lads!” said Prince Bagratión.
+
+“Glad to do our best, your ex’len-lency!” came a confused shout
+from the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
+Bagratión as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: “We
+know that ourselves!” Another, without looking round, as though
+fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.
+
+The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
+
+Bagratión rode round the ranks that had marched past him and
+dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over his
+felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The head of the
+French column, with its officers leading, appeared from below the hill.
+
+“Forward, with God!” said Bagratión, in a resolute, sonorous voice,
+turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging his arms,
+he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the awkward gait of
+a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading him
+forward, and experienced great happiness.
+
+The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside Bagratión,
+could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets, and even their
+faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who, with gaitered
+legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with difficulty.) Prince
+Bagratión gave no further orders and silently continued to walk on in
+front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after another rang out from the
+French, smoke appeared all along their uneven ranks, and musket shots
+sounded. Several of our men fell, among them the round-faced officer
+who had marched so gaily and complacently. But at the moment the first
+report was heard, Bagratión looked round and shouted, “Hurrah!”
+
+“Hurrah—ah!—ah!” rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and
+passing Bagratión and racing one another they rushed in an irregular
+but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
+flank. In the center Túshin’s forgotten battery, which had managed to
+set fire to the Schön Grabern village, delayed the French advance. The
+French were putting out the fire which the wind was spreading, and thus
+gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the center to the other side
+of the dip in the ground at the rear was hurried and noisy, but the
+different companies did not get mixed. But our left—which consisted
+of the Azóv and Podólsk infantry and the Pávlograd hussars—was
+simultaneously attacked and outflanked by superior French forces under
+Lannes and was thrown into confusion. Bagratión had sent Zherkóv
+to the general commanding that left flank with orders to retreat
+immediately.
+
+Zherkóv, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse about
+and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagratión than his courage
+failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it was
+dangerous.
+
+Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where the
+firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where they
+could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.
+
+The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander of
+the regiment Kutúzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which Dólokhov was
+serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had been
+assigned to the commander of the Pávlograd regiment in which Rostóv
+was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two commanders were much
+exasperated with one another and, long after the action had begun on
+the right flank and the French were already advancing, were engaged
+in discussion with the sole object of offending one another. But the
+regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were by no means ready for the
+impending action. From privates to general they were not expecting a
+battle and were engaged in peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the
+horses and the infantry collecting wood.
+
+“He higher iss dan I in rank,” said the German colonel of the
+hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, “so
+let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars... Bugler,
+sount ze retreat!”
+
+But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
+together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the capotes
+of Lannes’ sharpshooters were already seen crossing the milldam and
+forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The general in
+command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky steps, and
+having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and rode to the
+Pávlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows but with
+secret malevolence in their hearts.
+
+“Once again, Colonel,” said the general, “I can’t leave half
+my men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you,” he repeated, “to
+occupy the position and prepare for an attack.”
+
+“I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!”
+suddenly replied the irate colonel. “If you vere in the cavalry...”
+
+“I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if
+you are not aware of the fact...”
+
+“Quite avare, your excellency,” suddenly shouted the colonel,
+touching his horse and turning purple in the face. “Vill you be so
+goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don’t
+vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!”
+
+“You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own pleasure
+and I won’t allow it to be said!”
+
+Taking the colonel’s outburst as a challenge to his courage, the
+general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the
+front line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the
+bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and
+they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the
+line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that it
+was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken ground,
+as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The general
+and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another like two
+fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs
+of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As
+there was nothing to be said, and neither wished to give occasion for
+it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire,
+they would have remained there for a long time testing each other’s
+courage had it not been that just then they heard the rattle of musketry
+and a muffled shout almost behind them in the wood. The French had
+attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It was no longer possible
+for the hussars to retreat with the infantry. They were cut off from
+the line of retreat on the left by the French. However inconvenient the
+position, it was now necessary to attack in order to cut a way through
+for themselves.
+
+The squadron in which Rostóv was serving had scarcely time to mount
+before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns bridge,
+there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and again that
+terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear—resembling the line
+separating the living from the dead—lay between them. All were
+conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether they would cross
+it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them all.
+
+The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to questions put
+to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on having
+his own way, gave an order. No one said anything definite, but the rumor
+of an attack spread through the squadron. The command to form up rang
+out and the sabers whizzed as they were drawn from their scabbards.
+Still no one moved. The troops of the left flank, infantry and hussars
+alike, felt that the commander did not himself know what to do, and this
+irresolution communicated itself to the men.
+
+“If only they would be quick!” thought Rostóv, feeling that at last
+the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which he had so
+often heard from his fellow hussars.
+
+“Fo’ward, with God, lads!” rang out Denísov’s voice. “At a
+twot fo’ward!”
+
+The horses’ croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at the
+reins and started of his own accord.
+
+Before him, on the right, Rostóv saw the front lines of his hussars and
+still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see distinctly but
+took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some way off.
+
+“Faster!” came the word of command, and Rostóv felt Rook’s flanks
+drooping as he broke into a gallop.
+
+Rostóv anticipated his horse’s movements and became more and more
+elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had been
+in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible—and now he
+had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
+everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. “Oh, how I
+will slash at him!” thought Rostóv, gripping the hilt of his saber.
+
+“Hur-a-a-a-ah!” came a roar of voices. “Let anyone come my way
+now,” thought Rostóv driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go
+at a full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was
+already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep
+over the squadron. Rostóv raised his saber, ready to strike, but at
+that instant the trooper Nikítenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away
+from him, and Rostóv felt as in a dream that he continued to be carried
+forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same spot. From
+behind him Bondarchúk, an hussar he knew, jolted against him and looked
+angrily at him. Bondarchúk’s horse swerved and galloped past.
+
+“How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!” Rostóv
+asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle of a
+field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars’ backs, he saw nothing
+before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around him. There
+was warm blood under his arm. “No, I am wounded and the horse is
+killed.” Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back, pinning his
+rider’s leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled but could
+not rise. Rostóv also tried to rise but fell back, his sabretache
+having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men were, and where the
+French, he did not know. There was no one near.
+
+Having disentangled his leg, he rose. “Where, on which side, was now
+the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?” he asked himself
+and could not answer. “Can something bad have happened to me?”
+he wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something
+superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if
+it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find
+blood on it. “Ah, here are people coming,” he thought joyfully,
+seeing some men running toward him. “They will help me!” In front
+came a man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned,
+and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running
+behind. One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among the
+hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar. He
+was being held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him.
+
+“It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will
+take me too? Who are these men?” thought Rostóv, scarcely believing
+his eyes. “Can they be French?” He looked at the approaching
+Frenchmen, and though but a moment before he had been galloping to get
+at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful
+that he could not believe his eyes. “Who are they? Why are they
+running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom everyone
+is so fond of?” He remembered his mother’s love for him, and his
+family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him
+seemed impossible. “But perhaps they may do it!” For more than ten
+seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the situation.
+The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was already so
+close that the expression of his face could be seen. And the excited,
+alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding his breath,
+and running so lightly, frightened Rostóv. He seized his pistol and,
+instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran with all his
+might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the feeling of doubt
+and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns bridge, but with the
+feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One single sentiment, that
+of fear for his young and happy life, possessed his whole being. Rapidly
+leaping the furrows, he fled across the field with the impetuosity he
+used to show at catchplay, now and then turning his good-natured, pale,
+young face to look back. A shudder of terror went through him: “No,
+better not look,” he thought, but having reached the bushes he glanced
+round once more. The French had fallen behind, and just as he looked
+round the first man changed his run to a walk and, turning, shouted
+something loudly to a comrade farther back. Rostóv paused. “No,
+there’s some mistake,” thought he. “They can’t have wanted to
+kill me.” But at the same time, his left arm felt as heavy as if
+a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He could run no more. The
+Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostóv closed his eyes and stooped
+down. One bullet and then another whistled past him. He mustered his
+last remaining strength, took hold of his left hand with his right, and
+reached the bushes. Behind these were some Russian sharpshooters.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the outskirts
+of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting mixed, and
+retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his fear, uttered the
+senseless cry, “Cut off!” that is so terrible in battle, and that
+word infected the whole crowd with a feeling of panic.
+
+“Surrounded! Cut off? We’re lost!” shouted the fugitives.
+
+The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the general
+realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment, and the
+thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years’ service who
+had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters
+for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
+recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and above
+all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for self-preservation, he
+clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring his horse, galloped to
+the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell around, but fortunately
+missed him. His one desire was to know what was happening and at any
+cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he had made one, so that he,
+an exemplary officer of twenty-two years’ service, who had never been
+censured, should not be held to blame.
+
+Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind
+the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and
+descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides
+the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of soldiers
+attend to the voice of their commander, or would they, disregarding him,
+continue their flight? Despite his desperate shouts that used to seem
+so terrible to the soldiers, despite his furious purple countenance
+distorted out of all likeness to his former self, and the flourishing of
+his saber, the soldiers all continued to run, talking, firing into the
+air, and disobeying orders. The moral hesitation which decided the fate
+of battles was evidently culminating in a panic.
+
+The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the
+powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at that
+moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any apparent
+reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and Russian
+sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was Timókhin’s
+company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood and, having
+lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French unexpectedly.
+Timókhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the enemy with such
+a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination that, taken by
+surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets and run. Dólokhov,
+running beside Timókhin, killed a Frenchman at close quarters and was
+the first to seize the surrendering French officer by his collar. Our
+fugitives returned, the battalions re-formed, and the French who had
+nearly cut our left flank in half were for the moment repulsed. Our
+reserve units were able to join up, and the fight was at an end. The
+regimental commander and Major Ekonómov had stopped beside a bridge,
+letting the retreating companies pass by them, when a soldier came up
+and took hold of the commander’s stirrup, almost leaning against him.
+The man was wearing a bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack
+or cap, his head was bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition
+pouch was slung. He had an officer’s sword in his hand. The soldier
+was pale, his blue eyes looked impudently into the commander’s face,
+and his lips were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving
+instructions to Major Ekonómov, he could not help taking notice of the
+soldier.
+
+“Your excellency, here are two trophies,” said Dólokhov, pointing
+to the French sword and pouch. “I have taken an officer prisoner. I
+stopped the company.” Dólokhov breathed heavily from weariness and
+spoke in abrupt sentences. “The whole company can bear witness. I beg
+you will remember this, your excellency!”
+
+“All right, all right,” replied the commander, and turned to Major
+Ekonómov.
+
+But Dólokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around his
+head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.
+
+“A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your
+excellency!”
+
+
+Túshin’s battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of the
+action did Prince Bagratión, still hearing the cannonade in the center,
+send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew also, to order
+the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When the supports attached
+to Túshin’s battery had been moved away in the middle of the action
+by someone’s order, the battery had continued firing and was only not
+captured by the French because the enemy could not surmise that anyone
+could have the effrontery to continue firing from four quite undefended
+guns. On the contrary, the energetic action of that battery led the
+French to suppose that here—in the center—the main Russian forces
+were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to attack this point, but on
+each occasion had been driven back by grapeshot from the four isolated
+guns on the hillock.
+
+Soon after Prince Bagratión had left him, Túshin had succeeded in
+setting fire to Schön Grabern.
+
+“Look at them scurrying! It’s burning! Just see the smoke! Fine!
+Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!” exclaimed the artillerymen,
+brightening up.
+
+All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the
+direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the soldiers
+cried at each shot: “Fine! That’s good! Look at it... Grand!” The
+fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French columns
+that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as though in revenge
+for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the right of the village
+and began firing them at Túshin’s battery.
+
+In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in
+successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed this
+battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our guns, one
+knocking over two horses and another tearing off a munition-wagon
+driver’s leg. Their spirits once roused were, however, not diminished,
+but only changed character. The horses were replaced by others from a
+reserve gun carriage, the wounded were carried away, and the four guns
+were turned against the ten-gun battery. Túshin’s companion officer
+had been killed at the beginning of the engagement and within an hour
+seventeen of the forty men of the guns’ crews had been disabled, but
+the artillerymen were still as merry and lively as ever. Twice they
+noticed the French appearing below them, and then they fired grapeshot
+at them.
+
+Little Túshin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly to
+“refill my pipe for that one!” and then, scattering sparks from it,
+ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the French.
+
+“Smack at ‘em, lads!” he kept saying, seizing the guns by the
+wheels and working the screws himself.
+
+Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always made him
+jump, Túshin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun,
+now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing
+dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in his
+feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute. His face grew more and
+more animated. Only when a man was killed or wounded did he frown and
+turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at the men who, as is always
+the case, hesitated about lifting the injured or dead. The soldiers,
+for the most part handsome fellows and, as is always the case in an
+artillery company, a head and shoulders taller and twice as broad
+as their officer—all looked at their commander like children in an
+embarrassing situation, and the expression on his face was invariably
+reflected on theirs.
+
+Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and
+activity, Túshin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense of
+fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded never
+occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more elated. It
+seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a day, since he
+had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and that the corner
+of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar ground. Though he
+thought of everything, considered everything, and did everything the
+best of officers could do in his position, he was in a state akin to
+feverish delirium or drunkenness.
+
+From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle and
+thud of the enemy’s cannon balls, from the flushed and perspiring
+faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight of the blood
+of men and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on the enemy’s side
+(always followed by a ball flying past and striking the earth, a man, a
+gun, a horse), from the sight of all these things a fantastic world of
+his own had taken possession of his brain and at that moment afforded
+him pleasure. The enemy’s guns were in his fancy not guns but pipes
+from which occasional puffs were blown by an invisible smoker.
+
+“There... he’s puffing again,” muttered Túshin to himself, as a
+small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left by
+the wind.
+
+“Now look out for the ball... we’ll throw it back.”
+
+“What do you want, your honor?” asked an artilleryman, standing
+close by, who heard him muttering.
+
+“Nothing... only a shell...” he answered.
+
+“Come along, our Matvévna!” he said to himself. “Matvévna” *
+was the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which
+was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their guns
+seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard Number One
+of the second gun’s crew was “uncle”; Túshin looked at him more
+often than at anyone else and took delight in his every movement.
+The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now diminishing, now
+increasing, seemed like someone’s breathing. He listened intently to
+the ebb and flow of these sounds.
+
+    * Daughter of Matthew.
+
+“Ah! Breathing again, breathing!” he muttered to himself.
+
+He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was throwing
+cannon balls at the French with both hands.
+
+“Now then, Matvévna, dear old lady, don’t let me down!” he was
+saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice called
+above his head: “Captain Túshin! Captain!”
+
+Túshin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had turned
+him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping voice:
+
+“Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you...”
+
+“Why are they down on me?” thought Túshin, looking in alarm at his
+superior.
+
+“I... don’t...” he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap.
+“I...”
+
+But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon
+ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.
+He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another ball
+stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.
+
+“Retire! All to retire!” he shouted from a distance.
+
+The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the same
+order.
+
+It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the space
+where Túshin’s guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with a
+broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed horses.
+Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the limbers lay
+several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he approached
+and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the mere thought
+of being afraid roused him again. “I cannot be afraid,” thought he,
+and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the order and did
+not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns removed from their
+positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together with Túshin, stepping
+across the bodies and under a terrible fire from the French, he attended
+to the removal of the guns.
+
+“A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off,” said an
+artilleryman to Prince Andrew. “Not like your honor!”
+
+Prince Andrew said nothing to Túshin. They were both so busy as to seem
+not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two cannon
+that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down the hill
+(one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind), Prince Andrew rode
+up to Túshin.
+
+“Well, till we meet again...” he said, holding out his hand to
+Túshin.
+
+“Good-by, my dear fellow,” said Túshin. “Dear soul! Good-by, my
+dear fellow!” and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
+hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing
+dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous. The
+cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on the
+right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Túshin with his guns,
+continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
+of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the staff,
+among them the staff officer and Zherkóv, who had been twice sent to
+Túshin’s battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one
+another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to proceed,
+reprimanding and reproaching him. Túshin gave no orders, and,
+silently—fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to
+weep without knowing why—rode behind on his artillery nag. Though
+the orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves
+after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty
+infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of
+Túshin’s wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on
+“Matvévna’s” carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar
+cadet, supporting one hand with the other, came up to Túshin and asked
+for a seat.
+
+“Captain, for God’s sake! I’ve hurt my arm,” he said timidly.
+“For God’s sake... I can’t walk. For God’s sake!”
+
+It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift and
+been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.
+
+“Tell them to give me a seat, for God’s sake!”
+
+“Give him a seat,” said Túshin. “Lay a cloak for him to sit on,
+lad,” he said, addressing his favorite soldier. “And where is the
+wounded officer?”
+
+“He has been set down. He died,” replied someone.
+
+“Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
+Antónov.”
+
+The cadet was Rostóv. With one hand he supported the other; he was
+pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on
+“Matvévna,” the gun from which they had removed the dead officer.
+The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his
+breeches and arm.
+
+“What, are you wounded, my lad?” said Túshin, approaching the gun
+on which Rostóv sat.
+
+“No, it’s a sprain.”
+
+“Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?” inquired Túshin.
+
+“It was the officer, your honor, stained it,” answered the
+artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if
+apologizing for the state of his gun.
+
+It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by the
+infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they halted. It
+had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the uniforms ten paces
+off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on the
+right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of shot gleamed in
+the darkness. This was the last French attack and was met by soldiers
+who had sheltered in the village houses. They all rushed out of
+the village again, but Túshin’s guns could not move, and the
+artillerymen, Túshin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they
+awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly,
+streamed out of a side street.
+
+“Not hurt, Petróv?” asked one.
+
+“We’ve given it ‘em hot, mate! They won’t make another push
+now,” said another.
+
+“You couldn’t see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows!
+Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn’t there something to
+drink?”
+
+The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and again in
+the complete darkness Túshin’s guns moved forward, surrounded by the
+humming infantry as by a frame.
+
+In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was flowing
+always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and the sound of
+hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and voices of the
+wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound in the darkness
+of the night. The gloom that enveloped the army was filled with their
+groans, which seemed to melt into one with the darkness of the night.
+After a while the moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on
+a white horse followed by his suite, and said something in passing:
+“What did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank us?” came
+eager questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began pressing
+closer together and a report spread that they were ordered to halt:
+evidently those in front had halted. All remained where they were in the
+middle of the muddy road.
+
+Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Túshin,
+having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing
+station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the
+soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostóv, too, dragged himself to the
+fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his whole
+body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but he kept awake by
+an excruciating pain in his arm, for which he could find no satisfactory
+position. He kept closing his eyes and then again looking at the fire,
+which seemed to him dazzlingly red, and at the feeble, round-shouldered
+figure of Túshin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him.
+Túshin’s large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and
+commiseration on Rostóv, who saw that Túshin with his whole heart
+wished to help him but could not.
+
+From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry, who
+were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The sound
+of voices, the tramping feet, the horses’ hoofs moving in mud, the
+crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous rumble.
+
+It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through the
+gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a storm.
+Rostóv looked at and listened listlessly to what passed before and
+around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on his heels, held
+his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.
+
+“You don’t mind your honor?” he asked Túshin. “I’ve lost my
+company, your honor. I don’t know where... such bad luck!”
+
+With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came up to
+the bonfire, and addressing Túshin asked him to have the guns moved a
+trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers rushed to
+the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately, each trying
+to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding on to.
+
+“You picked it up?... I dare say! You’re very smart!” one of them
+shouted hoarsely.
+
+Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
+band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.
+
+“Must one die like a dog?” said he.
+
+Túshin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier
+ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.
+
+“A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you, fellow
+countrymen. Thanks for the fire—we’ll return it with interest,”
+said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.
+
+Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and passed
+by the fire. One of them stumbled.
+
+“Who the devil has put the logs on the road?” snarled he.
+
+“He’s dead—why carry him?” said another.
+
+“Shut up!”
+
+And they disappeared into the darkness with their load.
+
+“Still aching?” Túshin asked Rostóv in a whisper.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Your honor, you’re wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,”
+said a gunner, coming up to Túshin.
+
+“Coming, friend.”
+
+Túshin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,
+walked away from the fire.
+
+Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared
+for him, Prince Bagratión sat at dinner, talking with some commanding
+officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old man with
+the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the
+general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a
+glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the signet
+ring, and Zherkóv, uneasily glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew,
+pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.
+
+In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, and
+the accountant with the naïve face was feeling its texture, shaking his
+head in perplexity—perhaps because the banner really interested him,
+perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at
+a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut there was a
+French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our dragoons. Our officers
+were flocking in to look at him. Prince Bagratión was thanking the
+individual commanders and inquiring into details of the action and our
+losses. The general whose regiment had been inspected at Braunau was
+informing the prince that as soon as the action began he had withdrawn
+from the wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and, allowing the
+French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two battalions and
+had broken up the French troops.
+
+“When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
+disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: ‘I’ll let them
+come on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion’—and
+that’s what I did.”
+
+The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not managed
+to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened. Perhaps
+it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid all that
+confusion what did or did not happen?
+
+“By the way, your excellency, I should inform you,” he
+continued—remembering Dólokhov’s conversation with Kutúzov and his
+last interview with the gentleman-ranker—“that Private Dólokhov,
+who was reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my
+presence and particularly distinguished himself.”
+
+“I saw the Pávlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,” chimed
+in Zherkóv, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the hussars all
+that day, but had heard about them from an infantry officer. “They
+broke up two squares, your excellency.”
+
+Several of those present smiled at Zherkóv’s words, expecting one of
+his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to
+the glory of our arms and of the day’s work, they assumed a serious
+expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
+devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagratión turned to the old colonel:
+
+“Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
+infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
+abandoned in the center?” he inquired, searching with his eyes for
+someone. (Prince Bagratión did not ask about the guns on the left
+flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the very
+beginning of the action.) “I think I sent you?” he added, turning to
+the staff officer on duty.
+
+“One was damaged,” answered the staff officer, “and the other I
+can’t understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had only
+just left.... It is true that it was hot there,” he added, modestly.
+
+Someone mentioned that Captain Túshin was bivouacking close to the
+village and had already been sent for.
+
+“Oh, but you were there?” said Prince Bagratión, addressing Prince
+Andrew.
+
+“Of course, we only just missed one another,” said the staff
+officer, with a smile to Bolkónski.
+
+“I had not the pleasure of seeing you,” said Prince Andrew, coldly
+and abruptly.
+
+All were silent. Túshin appeared at the threshold and made his way
+timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past the
+generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always was by the
+sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of the banner and
+stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.
+
+“How was it a gun was abandoned?” asked Bagratión, frowning, not so
+much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom Zherkóv
+laughed loudest.
+
+Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his guilt
+and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive present
+themselves to Túshin in all their horror. He had been so excited that
+he had not thought about it until that moment. The officers’ laughter
+confused him still more. He stood before Bagratión with his lower
+jaw trembling and was hardly able to mutter: “I don’t know... your
+excellency... I had no men... your excellency.”
+
+“You might have taken some from the covering troops.”
+
+Túshin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that
+was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
+trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagratión as a schoolboy who
+has blundered looks at an examiner.
+
+The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagratión, apparently not wishing
+to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture to
+intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Túshin from under his brows and his
+fingers twitched nervously.
+
+“Your excellency!” Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
+voice, “you were pleased to send me to Captain Túshin’s battery. I
+went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two
+guns smashed, and no supports at all.”
+
+Prince Bagratión and Túshin looked with equal intentness at
+Bolkónski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.
+
+“And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion,” he
+continued, “we owe today’s success chiefly to the action of that
+battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Túshin and his company,”
+and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
+
+Prince Bagratión looked at Túshin, evidently reluctant to show
+distrust in Bolkónski’s emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully
+to credit it, bent his head, and told Túshin that he could go. Prince
+Andrew went out with him.
+
+“Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!” said Túshin.
+
+Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He felt
+sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped.
+
+
+“Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will
+all this end?” thought Rostóv, looking at the changing shadows before
+him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense. Irresistible
+drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his eyes, and the
+impression of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged
+with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers—wounded and
+unwounded—it was they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting
+the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To
+rid himself of them he closed his eyes.
+
+For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
+appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,
+Sónya’s thin little shoulders, Natásha’s eyes and laughter,
+Denísov with his voice and mustache, and Telyánin and all that affair
+with Telyánin and Bogdánich. That affair was the same thing as this
+soldier with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier
+that were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and
+always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them, but
+they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair’s breadth.
+It would not ache—it would be well—if only they did not pull it, but
+it was impossible to get rid of them.
+
+He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung less
+than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling snow were
+fluttering in that light. Túshin had not returned, the doctor had not
+come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at
+the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.
+
+“Nobody wants me!” thought Rostóv. “There is no one to help me or
+pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved.” He sighed
+and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.
+
+“Eh, is anything hurting you?” asked the soldier, shaking his shirt
+out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt and
+added: “What a lot of men have been crippled today—frightful!”
+
+Rostóv did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
+fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
+bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
+healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. “And why
+did I come here?” he wondered.
+
+Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant of
+Bagratión’s detachment was reunited to Kutúzov’s army.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE: 1805
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Prince Vasíli was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans.
+Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own advantage. He
+was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom getting on had
+become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he never rightly accounted
+to himself, but which formed the whole interest of his life,
+were constantly shaping themselves in his mind, arising from the
+circumstances and persons he met. Of these plans he had not merely one
+or two in his head but dozens, some only beginning to form themselves,
+some approaching achievement, and some in course of disintegration. He
+did not, for instance, say to himself: “This man now has influence, I
+must gain his confidence and friendship and through him obtain a special
+grant.” Nor did he say to himself: “Pierre is a rich man, I must
+entice him to marry my daughter and lend me the forty thousand rubles
+I need.” But when he came across a man of position his instinct
+immediately told him that this man could be useful, and without any
+premeditation Prince Vasíli took the first opportunity to gain his
+confidence, flatter him, become intimate with him, and finally make his
+request.
+
+He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an appointment as
+Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time conferred the status of
+Councilor of State, and insisted on the young man accompanying him to
+Petersburg and staying at his house. With apparent absent-mindedness,
+yet with unhesitating assurance that he was doing the right thing,
+Prince Vasíli did everything to get Pierre to marry his daughter. Had
+he thought out his plans beforehand he could not have been so natural
+and shown such unaffected familiarity in intercourse with everybody both
+above and below him in social standing. Something always drew him toward
+those richer and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in
+seizing the most opportune moment for making use of people.
+
+Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezúkhov and a rich man, felt
+himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset and
+preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He had to
+sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the purpose of
+which was not clear to him, to question his chief steward, to visit his
+estate near Moscow, and to receive many people who formerly did not
+even wish to know of his existence but would now have been offended
+and grieved had he chosen not to see them. These different
+people—businessmen, relations, and acquaintances alike—were all
+disposed to treat the young heir in the most friendly and flattering
+manner: they were all evidently firmly convinced of Pierre’s noble
+qualities. He was always hearing such words as: “With your remarkable
+kindness,” or, “With your excellent heart,” “You are yourself so
+honorable, Count,” or, “Were he as clever as you,” and so on,
+till he began sincerely to believe in his own exceptional kindness and
+extraordinary intelligence, the more so as in the depth of his heart it
+had always seemed to him that he really was very kind and intelligent.
+Even people who had formerly been spiteful toward him and evidently
+unfriendly now became gentle and affectionate. The angry eldest
+princess, with the long waist and hair plastered down like a doll’s,
+had come into Pierre’s room after the funeral. With drooping eyes
+and frequent blushes she told him she was very sorry about their past
+misunderstandings and did not now feel she had a right to ask him for
+anything, except only for permission, after the blow she had received,
+to remain for a few weeks longer in the house she so loved and where
+she had sacrificed so much. She could not refrain from weeping at these
+words. Touched that this statuesque princess could so change, Pierre
+took her hand and begged her forgiveness, without knowing what for.
+From that day the eldest princess quite changed toward Pierre and began
+knitting a striped scarf for him.
+
+“Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with a
+great deal from the deceased,” said Prince Vasíli to him, handing him
+a deed to sign for the princess’ benefit.
+
+Prince Vasíli had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to throw
+this bone—a bill for thirty thousand rubles—to the poor princess
+that it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the affair of
+the inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after that the princess
+grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became affectionate to him,
+especially the youngest, the pretty one with the mole, who often made
+him feel confused by her smiles and her own confusion when meeting him.
+
+It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it
+would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he could
+not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides, he had
+no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or not. He
+was always busy and always felt in a state of mild and cheerful
+intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some important and
+general movement; that something was constantly expected of him, that if
+he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many people, but if he
+did this and that, all would be well; and he did what was demanded of
+him, but still that happy result always remained in the future.
+
+More than anyone else, Prince Vasíli took possession of Pierre’s
+affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of
+Count Bezúkhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air of
+a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would not, for
+pity’s sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was the son of
+his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth, to the caprice
+of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few days he spent in
+Moscow after the death of Count Bezúkhov, he would call Pierre, or
+go to him himself, and tell him what ought to be done in a tone of
+weariness and assurance, as if he were adding every time: “You know
+I am overwhelmed with business and it is purely out of charity that
+I trouble myself about you, and you also know quite well that what I
+propose is the only thing possible.”
+
+“Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last,” said Prince
+Vasíli one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre’s elbow,
+speaking as if he were saying something which had long since been agreed
+upon and could not now be altered. “We start tomorrow and I’m giving
+you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important business
+here is now settled, and I ought to have been off long ago. Here is
+something I have received from the chancellor. I asked him for you, and
+you have been entered in the diplomatic corps and made a Gentleman of
+the Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open before you.”
+
+Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words
+were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his career,
+wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasíli interrupted him in
+the special deep cooing tone, precluding the possibility of interrupting
+his speech, which he used in extreme cases when special persuasion was
+needed.
+
+“Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my conscience,
+and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever complained yet of
+being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you could throw it
+up tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself when you get to
+Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from these terrible
+recollections.” Prince Vasíli sighed. “Yes, yes, my boy. And my
+valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly forgetting,” he added.
+“You know, mon cher, your father and I had some accounts to settle, so
+I have received what was due from the Ryazán estate and will keep it;
+you won’t require it. We’ll go into the accounts later.”
+
+By “what was due from the Ryazán estate” Prince Vasíli meant
+several thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre’s peasants,
+which the prince had retained for himself.
+
+In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of
+gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather the
+rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasíli had procured for him,
+and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so numerous
+that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of bewilderment, bustle,
+and continual expectation of some good, always in front of him but never
+attained.
+
+Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in Petersburg.
+The Guards had gone to the front; Dólokhov had been reduced to the
+ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince Andrew
+was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend his nights as he
+used to like to spend them, or to open his mind by intimate talks with
+a friend older than himself and whom he respected. His whole time
+was taken up with dinners and balls and was spent chiefly at Prince
+Vasíli’s house in the company of the stout princess, his wife, and
+his beautiful daughter Hélène.
+
+Like the others, Anna Pávlovna Schérer showed Pierre the change of
+attitude toward him that had taken place in society.
+
+Formerly in Anna Pávlovna’s presence, Pierre had always felt that
+what he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that
+remarks which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind became
+foolish as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte’s
+stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now everything Pierre said
+was charmant. Even if Anna Pávlovna did not say so, he could see that
+she wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.
+
+In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna
+Pávlovna’s usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added:
+“You will find the beautiful Hélène here, whom it is always
+delightful to see.”
+
+When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some
+link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and
+Hélène, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation were
+being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased him as an
+entertaining supposition.
+
+Anna Pávlovna’s “At Home” was like the former one, only the
+novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a
+diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very latest details of the
+Emperor Alexander’s visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august
+friends had pledged themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold
+the cause of justice against the enemy of the human race. Anna Pávlovna
+received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently relating to the
+young man’s recent loss by the death of Count Bezúkhov (everyone
+constantly considered it a duty to assure Pierre that he was greatly
+afflicted by the death of the father he had hardly known), and her
+melancholy was just like the august melancholy she showed at the mention
+of her most august Majesty the Empress Márya Fëdorovna. Pierre felt
+flattered by this. Anna Pávlovna arranged the different groups in her
+drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in which were
+Prince Vasíli and the generals, had the benefit of the diplomat.
+Another group was at the tea table. Pierre wished to join the former,
+but Anna Pávlovna—who was in the excited condition of a commander on
+a battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant ideas occur which
+there is hardly time to put in action—seeing Pierre, touched his
+sleeve with her finger, saying:
+
+“Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening.”
+(She glanced at Hélène and smiled at her.) “My dear Hélène, be
+charitable to my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for
+ten minutes. And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count
+who will not refuse to accompany you.”
+
+The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pávlovna detained Pierre, looking
+as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.
+
+“Isn’t she exquisite?” she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately
+beauty as she glided away. “And how she carries herself! For so young
+a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It comes from
+her heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least worldly of men
+would occupy a most brilliant position in society. Don’t you think so?
+I only wanted to know your opinion,” and Anna Pávlovna let Pierre go.
+
+Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Hélène’s
+perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Hélène, it was just of
+her beauty and her remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in
+society.
+
+The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed
+desirous of hiding her adoration for Hélène and inclined rather
+to show her fear of Anna Pávlovna. She looked at her niece, as if
+inquiring what she was to do with these people. On leaving them, Anna
+Pávlovna again touched Pierre’s sleeve, saying: “I hope you won’t
+say that it is dull in my house again,” and she glanced at Hélène.
+
+Hélène smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the
+possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt
+coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to see
+Hélène, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome
+and the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation,
+Hélène turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she gave
+to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so little
+meaning for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt was just
+speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to Pierre’s
+father, Count Bezúkhov, and showed them her own box. Princess Hélène
+asked to see the portrait of the aunt’s husband on the box lid.
+
+“That is probably the work of Vinesse,” said Pierre, mentioning
+a celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the
+snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.
+
+He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox,
+passing it across Hélène’s back. Hélène stooped forward to make
+room, and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at evening
+parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut very low at
+front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like marble to Pierre,
+was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could not but perceive
+the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near to his lips that
+he need only have bent his head a little to have touched them. He was
+conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of perfume, and the
+creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty
+forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the charm of her body
+only covered by her garments. And having once seen this he could not
+help being aware of it, just as we cannot renew an illusion we have once
+seen through.
+
+“So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?” Hélène
+seemed to say. “You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a
+woman who may belong to anyone—to you too,” said her glance. And at
+that moment Pierre felt that Hélène not only could, but must, be his
+wife, and that it could not be otherwise.
+
+He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing at the
+altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know, he did not
+even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he knew not why,
+that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would happen.
+
+Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more to see
+her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen her every
+day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could not, any more
+than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the
+mist and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he has
+once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was terribly close to him.
+She already had power over him, and between them there was no longer any
+barrier except the barrier of his own will.
+
+“Well, I will leave you in your little corner,” came Anna
+Pávlovna’s voice, “I see you are all right there.”
+
+And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done anything
+reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him that everyone
+knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.
+
+A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pávlovna said
+to him: “I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?”
+
+This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and
+Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg house
+done up.
+
+“That’s a good thing, but don’t move from Prince Vasíli’s. It
+is good to have a friend like the prince,” she said, smiling at Prince
+Vasíli. “I know something about that. Don’t I? And you are still so
+young. You need advice. Don’t be angry with me for exercising an old
+woman’s privilege.”
+
+She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they have
+mentioned their age. “If you marry it will be a different thing,”
+she continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at
+Hélène nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He
+muttered something and colored.
+
+When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking of what
+had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely understood that
+the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her beauty was mentioned
+he had said absent-mindedly: “Yes, she’s good looking,” he had
+understood that this woman might belong to him.
+
+“But she’s stupid. I have myself said she is stupid,” he thought.
+“There is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites
+in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her
+and she with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that’s why
+he was sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasíli is her
+father... It’s bad....” he reflected, but while he was thinking this
+(the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and was
+conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while thinking
+of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be his
+wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all he had
+thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her not as the
+daughter of Prince Vasíli, but visualized her whole body only veiled
+by its gray dress. “But no! Why did this thought never occur to me
+before?” and again he told himself that it was impossible, that there
+would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him dishonorable, in
+this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks and the words
+and looks of those who had seen them together. He recalled Anna
+Pávlovna’s words and looks when she spoke to him about his house,
+recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasíli and others, and was
+seized by terror lest he had already, in some way, bound himself to do
+something that was evidently wrong and that he ought not to do. But at
+the very time he was expressing this conviction to himself, in another
+part of his mind her image rose in all its womanly beauty.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In November, 1805, Prince Vasíli had to go on a tour of inspection
+in four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to
+visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son Anatole
+where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince Nicholas
+Bolkónski in order to arrange a match for him with the daughter of that
+rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking these new affairs,
+Prince Vasíli had to settle matters with Pierre, who, it is true, had
+latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in Prince Vasíli’s house
+where he was staying, and had been absurd, excited, and foolish in
+Hélène’s presence (as a lover should be), but had not yet proposed
+to her.
+
+“This is all very fine, but things must be settled,” said Prince
+Vasíli to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that
+Pierre who was under such obligations to him (“But never mind that”)
+was not behaving very well in this matter. “Youth, frivolity... well,
+God be with him,” thought he, relishing his own goodness of heart,
+“but it must be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow will be
+Lëlya’s name day. I will invite two or three people, and if he does
+not understand what he ought to do then it will be my affair—yes, my
+affair. I am her father.”
+
+Six weeks after Anna Pávlovna’s “At Home” and after the sleepless
+night when he had decided that to marry Hélène would be a calamity and
+that he ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision,
+had not left Prince Vasíli’s and felt with terror that in people’s
+eyes he was every day more and more connected with her, that it was
+impossible for him to return to his former conception of her, that he
+could not break away from her, and that though it would be a terrible
+thing he would have to unite his fate with hers. He might perhaps have
+been able to free himself but that Prince Vasíli (who had rarely before
+given receptions) now hardly let a day go by without having an evening
+party at which Pierre had to be present unless he wished to spoil
+the general pleasure and disappoint everyone’s expectation. Prince
+Vasíli, in the rare moments when he was at home, would take Pierre’s
+hand in passing and draw it downwards, or absent-mindedly hold out his
+wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek for Pierre to kiss and would say: “Till
+tomorrow,” or, “Be in to dinner or I shall not see you,” or, “I
+am staying in for your sake,” and so on. And though Prince Vasíli,
+when he stayed in (as he said) for Pierre’s sake, hardly exchanged a
+couple of words with him, Pierre felt unable to disappoint him.
+Every day he said to himself one and the same thing: “It is time I
+understood her and made up my mind what she really is. Was I mistaken
+before, or am I mistaken now? No, she is not stupid, she is an excellent
+girl,” he sometimes said to himself “she never makes a mistake,
+never says anything stupid. She says little, but what she does say is
+always clear and simple, so she is not stupid. She never was abashed and
+is not abashed now, so she cannot be a bad woman!” He had often begun
+to make reflections or think aloud in her company, and she had always
+answered him either by a brief but appropriate remark—showing that it
+did not interest her—or by a silent look and smile which more palpably
+than anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in
+regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with that smile.
+
+She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant for him
+alone, in which there was something more significant than in the general
+smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that everyone was
+waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line, and he knew that
+sooner or later he would step across it, but an incomprehensible terror
+seized him at the thought of that dreadful step. A thousand times during
+that month and a half while he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer to
+that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to himself: “What am I doing? I need
+resolution. Can it be that I have none?”
+
+He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this matter
+he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself and really
+possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when they feel
+themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was overpowered
+by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at Anna
+Pávlovna’s, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire
+paralyzed his will.
+
+On Hélène’s name day, a small party of just their own people—as
+his wife said—met for supper at Prince Vasíli’s. All these friends
+and relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young
+girl would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.
+Princess Kurágina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,
+was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the
+more important guests—an old general and his wife, and Anna Pávlovna
+Schérer. At the other end sat the younger and less important guests,
+and there too sat the members of the family, and Pierre and Hélène,
+side by side. Prince Vasíli was not having any supper: he went round
+the table in a merry mood, sitting down now by one, now by another, of
+the guests. To each of them he made some careless and agreeable remark
+except to Pierre and Hélène, whose presence he seemed not to notice.
+He enlivened the whole party. The wax candles burned brightly, the
+silver and crystal gleamed, so did the ladies’ toilets and the gold
+and silver of the men’s epaulets; servants in scarlet liveries moved
+round the table, the clatter of plates, knives, and glasses mingled with
+the animated hum of several conversations. At one end of the table, the
+old chamberlain was heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her
+passionately, at which she laughed; at the other could be heard the
+story of the misfortunes of some Mary Víktorovna or other. At the
+center of the table, Prince Vasíli attracted everybody’s attention.
+With a facetious smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about last
+Wednesday’s meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergéy Kuzmích
+Vyazmítinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had
+received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander
+from the army to Sergéy Kuzmích, in which the Emperor said that he was
+receiving from all sides declarations of the people’s loyalty, that
+the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that
+he was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would endeavor to be
+worthy of it. This rescript began with the words: “Sergéy Kuzmích,
+From all sides reports reach me,” etc.
+
+“Well, and so he never got farther than: ‘Sergéy Kuzmích’?”
+asked one of the ladies.
+
+“Exactly, not a hair’s breadth farther,” answered Prince Vasíli,
+laughing, “‘Sergéy Kuzmích... From all sides... From all sides...
+Sergéy Kuzmích...’ Poor Vyazmítinov could not get any farther!
+He began the rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered
+‘Sergéy’ he sobbed, ‘Kuz-mí-ch,’ tears, and ‘From all
+sides’ was smothered in sobs and he could get no farther. And again
+his handkerchief, and again: ‘Sergéy Kuzmích, From all sides,’...
+and tears, till at last somebody else was asked to read it.”
+
+“Kuzmích... From all sides... and then tears,” someone repeated
+laughing.
+
+“Don’t be unkind,” cried Anna Pávlovna from her end of the table
+holding up a threatening finger. “He is such a worthy and excellent
+man, our dear Vyazmítinov....”
+
+Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where the
+honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and under the
+influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre and
+Hélène sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the table, a
+suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that had nothing
+to do with Sergéy Kuzmích—a smile of bashfulness at their own
+feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much
+as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, sauté, and ices, and however they
+avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant as
+they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances they gave
+that the story about Sergéy Kuzmích, the laughter, and the food
+were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company was
+directed to—Pierre and Hélène. Prince Vasíli mimicked the sobbing
+of Sergéy Kuzmích and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his
+daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly said:
+“Yes... it’s getting on, it will all be settled today.” Anna
+Pávlovna threatened him on behalf of “our dear Vyazmítinov,” and
+in her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasíli
+read a congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter’s
+happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to the
+old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and her sigh
+seemed to say: “Yes, there’s nothing left for you and me but to sip
+sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these young ones to
+be thus boldly, provocatively happy.” “And what nonsense all this is
+that I am saying!” thought a diplomatist, glancing at the happy faces
+of the lovers. “That’s happiness!”
+
+Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting that
+society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a healthy
+and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this human feeling
+dominated everything else and soared above all their affected chatter.
+Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the animation was
+evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the footmen waiting at
+table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their duties as they looked
+at the beautiful Hélène with her radiant face and at the red, broad,
+and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It seemed as if the very light
+of the candles was focused on those two happy faces alone.
+
+Pierre felt that he was the center of it all, and this both pleased and
+embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some occupation.
+He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only now and
+then detached ideas and impressions from the world of reality shot
+unexpectedly through his mind.
+
+“So it is all finished!” he thought. “And how has it all happened?
+How quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself
+alone, but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They are
+all expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I cannot, I
+cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not know, but it
+will certainly happen!” thought Pierre, glancing at those dazzling
+shoulders close to his eyes.
+
+Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it
+awkward to attract everyone’s attention and to be considered a
+lucky man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris
+possessed of a Helen. “But no doubt it always is and must be so!”
+he consoled himself. “And besides, what have I done to bring it about?
+How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasíli. Then there
+was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I played cards
+with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with her. How did it
+begin, when did it all come about?” And here he was sitting by her
+side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her nearness, her
+breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would suddenly seem to him
+that it was not she but he was so unusually beautiful, and that that was
+why they all looked so at him, and flattered by this general admiration
+he would expand his chest, raise his head, and rejoice at his good
+fortune. Suddenly he heard a familiar voice repeating something to him a
+second time. But Pierre was so absorbed that he did not understand what
+was said.
+
+“I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkónski,” repeated
+Prince Vasíli a third time. “How absent-minded you are, my dear
+fellow.”
+
+Prince Vasíli smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling at
+him and Hélène. “Well, what of it, if you all know it?” thought
+Pierre. “What of it? It’s the truth!” and he himself smiled his
+gentle childlike smile, and Hélène smiled too.
+
+“When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmütz?” repeated
+Prince Vasíli, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a
+dispute.
+
+“How can one talk or think of such trifles?” thought Pierre.
+
+“Yes, from Olmütz,” he answered, with a sigh.
+
+After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the
+drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking leave
+of Hélène. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an important
+occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go away,
+refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a mournful
+silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity of his
+diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre’s happiness. The old
+general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was. “Oh, the
+old fool,” he thought. “That Princess Hélène will be beautiful
+still when she’s fifty.”
+
+“I think I may congratulate you,” whispered Anna Pávlovna to the
+old princess, kissing her soundly. “If I hadn’t this headache I’d
+have stayed longer.”
+
+The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
+daughter’s happiness.
+
+While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a long time
+alone with Hélène in the little drawing room where they were sitting.
+He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained alone with her,
+but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that it was inevitable,
+but he could not make up his mind to take the final step. He felt
+ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone else’s place here
+beside Hélène. “This happiness is not for you,” some inner voice
+whispered to him. “This happiness is for those who have not in them
+what there is in you.”
+
+But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether she was
+satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple manner that
+this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest she had ever had.
+
+Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in
+the large drawing room. Prince Vasíli came up to Pierre with languid
+footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasíli gave
+him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just said was
+so strange that one could not take it in. But then the expression of
+severity changed, and he drew Pierre’s hand downwards, made him sit
+down, and smiled affectionately.
+
+“Well, Lëlya?” he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and
+addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural to
+parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which Prince
+Vasíli had only acquired by imitating other parents.
+
+And he again turned to Pierre.
+
+“Sergéy Kuzmích—From all sides—” he said, unbuttoning the top
+button of his waistcoat.
+
+Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the story
+about Sergéy Kuzmích that interested Prince Vasíli just then, and
+Prince Vasíli saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered
+something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince was
+disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the world
+touched Pierre: he looked at Hélène and she too seemed disconcerted,
+and her look seemed to say: “Well, it is your own fault.”
+
+“The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!” thought Pierre,
+and he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergéy
+Kuzmích, asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it
+properly. Hélène answered with a smile that she too had missed it.
+
+When Prince Vasíli returned to the drawing room, the princess, his
+wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.
+
+“Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear...”
+
+“Marriages are made in heaven,” replied the elderly lady.
+
+Prince Vasíli passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat down
+on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and seemed to
+be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.
+
+“Aline,” he said to his wife, “go and see what they are about.”
+
+The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified and
+indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room. Pierre and
+Hélène still sat talking just as before.
+
+“Still the same,” she said to her husband.
+
+Prince Vasíli frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and his
+face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him. Shaking
+himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps went
+past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he went
+joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant that Pierre
+rose in alarm on seeing it.
+
+“Thank God!” said Prince Vasíli. “My wife has told me
+everything!” (He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his
+daughter.)—“My dear boy... Lëlya... I am very pleased.” (His
+voice trembled.) “I loved your father... and she will make you a good
+wife... God bless you!...”
+
+He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with his
+malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.
+
+“Princess, come here!” he shouted.
+
+The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using
+her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful
+Hélène’s hand several times. After a while they were left alone
+again.
+
+“All this had to be and could not be otherwise,” thought Pierre,
+“so it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because
+it’s definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt.” Pierre
+held the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful
+bosom as it rose and fell.
+
+“Hélène!” he said aloud and paused.
+
+“Something special is always said in such cases,” he thought, but
+could not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face.
+She drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.
+
+“Oh, take those off... those...” she said, pointing to his
+spectacles.
+
+Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes have
+from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a frightened and
+inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but
+with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his
+lips and met them with her own. Her face struck Pierre, by its altered,
+unpleasantly excited expression.
+
+“It is too late now, it’s done; besides I love her,” thought
+Pierre.
+
+“Je vous aime!” * he said, remembering what has to be said at such
+moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of himself.
+
+    * “I love you.”
+
+
+Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezúkhov’s
+large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people
+said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Old Prince Nicholas Bolkónski received a letter from Prince Vasíli
+in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying him
+a visit. “I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I
+shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see you at
+the same time, my honored benefactor,” wrote Prince Vasíli. “My son
+Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you will
+allow him personally to express the deep respect that, emulating his
+father, he feels for you.”
+
+“It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors are
+coming to us of their own accord,” incautiously remarked the little
+princess on hearing the news.
+
+Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.
+
+A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasíli’s servants came one
+evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.
+
+Old Bolkónski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasíli’s
+character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and
+Alexander Prince Vasíli had risen to high position and honors. And now,
+from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little princess,
+he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion changed into
+a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever he mentioned
+him. On the day of Prince Vasíli’s arrival, Prince Bolkónski was
+particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he was in a bad
+temper because Prince Vasíli was coming, or whether his being in a bad
+temper made him specially annoyed at Prince Vasíli’s visit, he was
+in a bad temper, and in the morning Tíkhon had already advised the
+architect not to go to the prince with his report.
+
+“Do you hear how he’s walking?” said Tíkhon, drawing the
+architect’s attention to the sound of the prince’s footsteps.
+“Stepping flat on his heels—we know what that means....”
+
+However, at nine o’clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable
+collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day
+before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the
+habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still
+visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the
+soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince went
+through the conservatories, the serfs’ quarters, and the outbuildings,
+frowning and silent.
+
+“Can a sleigh pass?” he asked his overseer, a venerable man,
+resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him
+back to the house.
+
+“The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor.”
+
+The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. “God be
+thanked,” thought the overseer, “the storm has blown over!”
+
+“It would have been hard to drive up, your honor,” he added. “I
+heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor.”
+
+The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
+frowning.
+
+“What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?” he said in
+his shrill, harsh voice. “The road is not swept for the princess my
+daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!”
+
+“Your honor, I thought...”
+
+“You thought!” shouted the prince, his words coming more and more
+rapidly and indistinctly. “You thought!... Rascals! Blackguards!...
+I’ll teach you to think!” and lifting his stick he swung it and
+would have hit Alpátych, the overseer, had not the latter instinctively
+avoided the blow. “Thought... Blackguards...” shouted the prince
+rapidly.
+
+But although Alpátych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the
+stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before
+him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he continued
+to shout: “Blackguards!... Throw the snow back on the road!” did not
+lift his stick again but hurried into the house.
+
+Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew
+that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle
+Bourienne with a radiant face that said: “I know nothing, I am the
+same as usual,” and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast
+eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such occasions
+she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not.
+She thought: “If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not
+sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he will
+say (as he has done before) that I’m in the dumps.”
+
+The prince looked at his daughter’s frightened face and snorted.
+
+“Fool... or dummy!” he muttered.
+
+“And the other one is not here. They’ve been telling tales,” he
+thought—referring to the little princess who was not in the dining
+room.
+
+“Where is the princess?” he asked. “Hiding?”
+
+“She is not very well,” answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with
+a bright smile, “so she won’t come down. It is natural in her
+state.”
+
+“Hm! Hm!” muttered the prince, sitting down.
+
+His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he
+flung it away. Tíkhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little
+princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the prince
+that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to appear.
+
+“I am afraid for the baby,” she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:
+“Heaven knows what a fright might do.”
+
+In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, and
+with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not
+realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The prince
+reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his contempt
+for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to life at Bald
+Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle Bourienne, spent whole
+days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often talked with her
+about the old prince and criticized him.
+
+“So we are to have visitors, mon prince?” remarked Mademoiselle
+Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. “His
+Excellency Prince Vasíli Kurágin and his son, I understand?” she
+said inquiringly.
+
+“Hm!—his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the
+service,” said the prince disdainfully. “Why his son is coming I
+don’t understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know.
+I don’t want him.” (He looked at his blushing daughter.) “Are you
+unwell today? Eh? Afraid of the ‘minister’ as that idiot Alpátych
+called him this morning?”
+
+“No, mon père.”
+
+Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice
+of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the
+conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and
+after the soup the prince became more genial.
+
+After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess
+was sitting at a small table, chattering with Másha, her maid. She grew
+pale on seeing her father-in-law.
+
+She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her cheeks
+had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.
+
+“Yes, I feel a kind of oppression,” she said in reply to the
+prince’s question as to how she felt.
+
+“Do you want anything?”
+
+“No, merci, mon père.”
+
+“Well, all right, all right.”
+
+He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpátych stood with
+bowed head.
+
+“Has the snow been shoveled back?”
+
+“Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven’s sake... It was only
+my stupidity.”
+
+“All right, all right,” interrupted the prince, and laughing his
+unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpátych to kiss, and then
+proceeded to his study.
+
+Prince Vasíli arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by
+coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to
+one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.
+
+Prince Vasíli and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.
+
+Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo before a
+table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly fixed his
+large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual round
+of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him.
+And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and a rich and ugly
+heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought, turn out very well
+and amusingly. “And why not marry her if she really has so much money?
+That never does any harm,” thought Anatole.
+
+He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had
+become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his
+father’s room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to
+him. Prince Vasíli’s two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked
+round with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter
+entered, as if to say: “Yes, that’s how I want you to look.”
+
+“I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?” Anatole asked,
+as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been
+mentioned during the journey.
+
+“Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
+with the old prince.”
+
+“If he starts a row I’ll go away,” said Prince Anatole. “I
+can’t bear those old men! Eh?”
+
+“Remember, for you everything depends on this.”
+
+In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants’ rooms that
+the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of both had
+been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room,
+vainly trying to master her agitation.
+
+“Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never
+happen!” she said, looking at herself in the glass. “How shall I
+enter the drawing room? Even if I like him I can’t now be myself with
+him.” The mere thought of her father’s look filled her with terror.
+The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received
+from Másha, the lady’s maid, the necessary report of how handsome the
+minister’s son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and with
+what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while the son
+had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received
+this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose
+chattering voices had reached her from the corridor, went into Princess
+Mary’s room.
+
+“You know they’ve come, Marie?” said the little princess, waddling
+in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.
+
+She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the morning,
+but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully done and her
+face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded
+outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still
+more noticeable how much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch
+had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne’s toilet which rendered her
+fresh and pretty face yet more attractive.
+
+“What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?” she
+began. “They’ll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing
+room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself
+up at all!”
+
+The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and merrily
+began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary should be
+dressed. Princess Mary’s self-esteem was wounded by the fact that
+the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both
+her companions’ not having the least conception that it could be
+otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them
+would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to
+dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her
+beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took
+on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she
+submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women
+quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so plain that
+neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they began dressing
+her with perfect sincerity, and with the naïve and firm conviction
+women have that dress can make a face pretty.
+
+“No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty,” said Lise, looking
+sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. “You have a maroon
+dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life may
+be at stake. But this one is too light, it’s not becoming!”
+
+It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary
+that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little
+princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were placed
+in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged lower on
+the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They forgot that
+the frightened face and the figure could not be altered, and that
+however they might change the setting and adornment of that face, it
+would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three changes to
+which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair had been arranged
+on the top of her head (a style that quite altered and spoiled her
+looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a pale-blue scarf, the
+little princess walked twice round her, now adjusting a fold of the
+dress with her little hand, now arranging the scarf and looking at her
+with her head bent first on one side and then on the other.
+
+“No, it will not do,” she said decidedly, clasping her hands. “No,
+Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little
+gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie,” she said
+to the maid, “bring the princess her gray dress, and you’ll see,
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it,” she added, smiling
+with a foretaste of artistic pleasure.
+
+But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained
+sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in the
+mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to burst
+into sobs.
+
+“Come, dear princess,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, “just one more
+little effort.”
+
+The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to Princess
+Mary.
+
+“Well, now we’ll arrange something quite simple and becoming,” she
+said.
+
+The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s, and Katie’s, who
+was laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping
+of birds.
+
+“No, leave me alone,” said Princess Mary.
+
+Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds
+was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful
+eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at
+them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist.
+
+“At least, change your coiffure,” said the little princess.
+“Didn’t I tell you,” she went on, turning reproachfully to
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, “Mary’s is a face which such a coiffure does
+not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it.”
+
+“Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to
+me,” answered a voice struggling with tears.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to themselves
+that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse than usual,
+but it was too late. She was looking at them with an expression they
+both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This expression in Princess
+Mary did not frighten them (she never inspired fear in anyone), but they
+knew that when it appeared on her face, she became mute and was not to
+be shaken in her determination.
+
+“You will change it, won’t you?” said Lise. And as Princess Mary
+gave no answer, she left the room.
+
+Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise’s request,
+she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look in her
+glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with downcast eyes and
+pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and strangely attractive
+being rose in her imagination, and carried her into a totally different
+happy world of his own. She fancied a child, her own—such as she had
+seen the day before in the arms of her nurse’s daughter—at her
+own breast, the husband standing by and gazing tenderly at her and the
+child. “But no, it is impossible, I am too ugly,” she thought.
+
+“Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment,” came the
+maid’s voice at the door.
+
+She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking, and
+before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and, her
+eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a
+lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments. A painful
+doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a
+man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess Mary dreamed of
+happiness and of children, but her strongest, most deeply hidden longing
+was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this feeling from
+others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. “O God,” she
+said, “how am I to stifle in my heart these temptations of the devil?
+How am I to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to
+fulfill Thy will?” And scarcely had she put that question than God
+gave her the answer in her own heart. “Desire nothing for thyself,
+seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man’s future and thy own fate
+must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for
+anything. If it be God’s will to prove thee in the duties of marriage,
+be ready to fulfill His will.” With this consoling thought (but
+yet with a hope for the fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing)
+Princess Mary sighed, and having crossed herself went down, thinking
+neither of her gown and coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what
+she would say. What could all that matter in comparison with the will of
+God, without Whose care not a hair of man’s head can fall?
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasíli and his son were already
+in the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle
+Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her heels,
+the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little princess,
+indicating her to the gentlemen, said: “Voilà Marie!” Princess Mary
+saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince Vasíli’s face,
+serious for an instant at the sight of her, but immediately smiling
+again, and the little princess curiously noting the impression
+“Marie” produced on the visitors. And she saw Mademoiselle
+Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her unusually animated
+look which was fixed on him, but him she could not see, she only saw
+something large, brilliant, and handsome moving toward her as she
+entered the room. Prince Vasíli approached first, and she kissed the
+bold forehead that bent over her hand and answered his question by
+saying that, on the contrary, she remembered him quite well. Then
+Anatole came up to her. She still could not see him. She only felt a
+soft hand taking hers firmly, and she touched with her lips a white
+forehead, over which was beautiful light-brown hair smelling of pomade.
+When she looked up at him she was struck by his beauty. Anatole stood
+with his right thumb under a button of his uniform, his chest expanded
+and his back drawn in, slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a
+little bent, looked with beaming face at the princess without
+speaking and evidently not thinking about her at all. Anatole was not
+quick-witted, nor ready or eloquent in conversation, but he had the
+faculty, so invaluable in society, of composure and imperturbable
+self-possession. If a man lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on
+a first introduction and betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of
+such silence and an anxiety to find something to say, the effect is
+bad. But Anatole was dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the
+princess’ hair. It was evident that he could be silent in this way for
+a very long time. “If anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him
+talk, but I don’t want to,” he seemed to say. Besides this, in his
+behavior to women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in
+them curiosity, awe, and even love—a supercilious consciousness of
+his own superiority. It was as if he said to them: “I know you, I know
+you, but why should I bother about you? You’d be only too glad, of
+course.” Perhaps he did not really think this when he met women—even
+probably he did not, for in general he thought very little—but his
+looks and manner gave that impression. The princess felt this, and as if
+wishing to show him that she did not even dare expect to interest him,
+she turned to his father. The conversation was general and animated,
+thanks to Princess Lise’s voice and little downy lip that lifted over
+her white teeth. She met Prince Vasíli with that playful manner often
+employed by lively chatty people, and consisting in the assumption
+that between the person they so address and themselves there are some
+semi-private, long-established jokes and amusing reminiscences, though
+no such reminiscences really exist—just as none existed in this case.
+Prince Vasíli readily adopted her tone and the little princess also
+drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew, into these amusing recollections of
+things that had never occurred. Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them
+and even Princess Mary felt herself pleasantly made to share in these
+merry reminiscences.
+
+“Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to
+ourselves, dear prince,” said the little princess (of course, in
+French) to Prince Vasíli. “It’s not as at Annette’s * receptions
+where you always ran away; you remember cette chère Annette!”
+
+    * Anna Pávlovna.
+
+“Ah, but you won’t talk politics to me like Annette!”
+
+“And our little tea table?”
+
+“Oh, yes!”
+
+“Why is it you were never at Annette’s?” the little princess asked
+Anatole. “Ah, I know, I know,” she said with a sly glance, “your
+brother Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!” and she shook her
+finger at him, “I have even heard of your doings in Paris!”
+
+“And didn’t Hippolyte tell you?” asked Prince Vasíli, turning to
+his son and seizing the little princess’ arm as if she would have run
+away and he had just managed to catch her, “didn’t he tell you how
+he himself was pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the
+door? Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess,” he added, turning to
+Princess Mary.
+
+When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized the
+opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections.
+
+She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since Anatole
+had left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole answered the
+Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a smile, talked to her
+about her native land. When he saw the pretty little Bourienne, Anatole
+came to the conclusion that he would not find Bald Hills dull either.
+“Not at all bad!” he thought, examining her, “not at all bad, that
+little companion! I hope she will bring her along with her when we’re
+married, la petite est gentille.” *
+
+    * The little one is charming.
+
+The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and considering
+what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him. “What are
+Prince Vasíli and that son of his to me? Prince Vasíli is a shallow
+braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine specimen,” he grumbled to
+himself. What angered him was that the coming of these visitors revived
+in his mind an unsettled question he always tried to stifle, one about
+which he always deceived himself. The question was whether he could ever
+bring himself to part from his daughter and give her to a husband. The
+prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing beforehand
+that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only
+with his feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life without
+Princess Mary, little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to
+him. “And why should she marry?” he thought. “To be unhappy for
+certain. There’s Lise, married to Andrew—a better husband one would
+think could hardly be found nowadays—but is she contented with her
+lot? And who would marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They’ll
+take her for her connections and wealth. Are there no women living
+unmarried, and even the happier for it?” So thought Prince Bolkónski
+while dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off demanded
+an immediate answer. Prince Vasíli had brought his son with the evident
+intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask
+for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad. “Well,
+I’ve nothing against it,” the prince said to himself, “but he must
+be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see.”
+
+“That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!” he added
+aloud.
+
+He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing rapidly
+round the company. He noticed the change in the little princess’
+dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s ribbon, Princess Mary’s unbecoming
+coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s and Anatole’s smiles, and the
+loneliness of his daughter amid the general conversation. “Got herself
+up like a fool!” he thought, looking irritably at her. “She is
+shameless, and he ignores her!”
+
+He went straight up to Prince Vasíli.
+
+“Well! How d’ye do? How d’ye do? Glad to see you!”
+
+“Friendship laughs at distance,” began Prince Vasíli in his usual
+rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. “Here is my second son; please
+love and befriend him.”
+
+Prince Bolkónski surveyed Anatole.
+
+“Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!” he said. “Well, come and
+kiss me,” and he offered his cheek.
+
+Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and perfect
+composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his father had
+told him to expect.
+
+Prince Bolkónski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa
+and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasíli, pointed to it and began
+questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen
+attentively to what Prince Vasíli said, but kept glancing at Princess
+Mary.
+
+“And so they are writing from Potsdam already?” he said, repeating
+Prince Vasíli’s last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his
+daughter.
+
+“Is it for visitors you’ve got yourself up like that, eh?” said
+he. “Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for
+the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you are
+never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent.”
+
+“It was my fault, mon père,” interceded the little princess, with a
+blush.
+
+“You must do as you please,” said Prince Bolkónski, bowing to his
+daughter-in-law, “but she need not make a fool of herself, she’s
+plain enough as it is.”
+
+And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who was
+reduced to tears.
+
+“On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,” said
+Prince Vasíli.
+
+“Now you, young prince, what’s your name?” said Prince Bolkónski,
+turning to Anatole, “come here, let us talk and get acquainted.”
+
+“Now the fun begins,” thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile
+beside the old prince.
+
+“Well, my dear boy, I hear you’ve been educated abroad, not taught
+to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me,
+my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?” asked the old man,
+scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.
+
+“No, I have been transferred to the line,” said Anatole, hardly able
+to restrain his laughter.
+
+“Ah! That’s a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the
+Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve.
+Well, are you off to the front?”
+
+“No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am attached...
+what is it I am attached to, Papa?” said Anatole, turning to his
+father with a laugh.
+
+“A splendid soldier, splendid! ‘What am I attached to!’ Ha, ha,
+ha!” laughed Prince Bolkónski, and Anatole laughed still louder.
+Suddenly Prince Bolkónski frowned.
+
+“You may go,” he said to Anatole.
+
+Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
+
+“And so you’ve had him educated abroad, Prince Vasíli, haven’t
+you?” said the old prince to Prince Vasíli.
+
+“I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education there
+is much better than ours.”
+
+“Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The
+lad’s a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now.” He took
+Prince Vasíli’s arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were
+alone together, Prince Vasíli announced his hopes and wishes to the old
+prince.
+
+“Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can’t part from
+her?” said the old prince angrily. “What an idea! I’m ready for it
+tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better. You
+know my principles—everything aboveboard! I will ask her tomorrow in
+your presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can stay and
+I’ll see.” The old prince snorted. “Let her marry, it’s all the
+same to me!” he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting
+from his son.
+
+“I will tell you frankly,” said Prince Vasíli in the tone of
+a crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so
+keen-sighted a companion. “You know, you see right through people.
+Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an excellent
+son or kinsman.”
+
+“All right, all right, we’ll see!”
+
+As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time
+without male society, on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of
+Prince Bolkónski’s household felt that their life had not been real
+till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately
+increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in
+darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of significance.
+
+Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The
+handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband absorbed
+all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and
+magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams of a future
+family life continually rose in her imagination. She drove them away and
+tried to conceal them.
+
+“But am I not too cold with him?” thought the princess. “I try
+to be reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him
+already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine
+that I do not like him.”
+
+And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to her new
+guest. “Poor girl, she’s devilish ugly!” thought Anatole.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole’s
+arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young woman
+without any definite position, without relations or even a country, did
+not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkónski, to reading
+aloud to him and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
+Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince who, able to
+appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain, badly dressed,
+ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in love with her and carry her
+off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew
+a story, heard from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she
+liked to repeat to herself. It was the story of a girl who had been
+seduced, and to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mère) appeared, and
+reproached her for yielding to a man without being married. Mademoiselle
+Bourienne was often touched to tears as in imagination she told this
+story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince, had
+appeared. He would carry her away and then sa pauvre mère would appear
+and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself in Mademoiselle
+Bourienne’s head at the very time she was talking to Anatole about
+Paris. It was not calculation that guided her (she did not even for a
+moment consider what she should do), but all this had long been familiar
+to her, and now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around
+him and she wished and tried to please him as much as possible.
+
+The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,
+unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the
+familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any
+struggle, but with naïve and lighthearted gaiety.
+
+Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man
+tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the
+spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was
+beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne
+that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him with great
+suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.
+
+After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess Mary was
+asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits,
+came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle
+Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
+Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic world and
+the look she felt upon her made that world still more poetic. But
+Anatole’s expression, though his eyes were fixed on her, referred not
+to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne’s little
+foot, which he was then touching with his own under the clavichord.
+Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her
+lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and hope that was also new
+to the princess.
+
+“How she loves me!” thought Princess Mary. “How happy I am now,
+and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband?
+Can it be possible?” she thought, not daring to look at his face, but
+still feeling his eyes gazing at her.
+
+In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole
+kissed Princess Mary’s hand. She did not know how she found the
+courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came near
+to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up and
+kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand. (This was not etiquette, but
+then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!) Mademoiselle
+Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened look.
+
+“What delicacy!” thought the princess. “Is it possible that
+Amélie” (Mademoiselle Bourienne) “thinks I could be jealous of her,
+and not value her pure affection and devotion to me?” She went up
+to her and kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little
+princess’ hand.
+
+“No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving
+well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!” she said. And
+smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as he
+got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.
+
+“Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind—yes,
+kind, that is the chief thing,” thought Princess Mary; and fear, which
+she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round, it
+seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen in the
+dark corner. And this someone was he—the devil—and he was also this
+man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.
+
+She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long
+time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at someone, now
+working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre mère
+rebuking her for her fall.
+
+The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly made.
+She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every position was
+awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her now more than
+ever because Anatole’s presence had vividly recalled to her the time
+when she was not like that and when everything was light and gay. She
+sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and nightcap and Katie, sleepy
+and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy feather bed for the third
+time, muttering to herself.
+
+“I told you it was all lumps and holes!” the little princess
+repeated. “I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it’s not my
+fault!” and her voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.
+
+The old prince did not sleep either. Tíkhon, half asleep, heard him
+pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though he
+had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more pointed
+because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter, whom he
+loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would consider
+the whole matter and decide what was right and how he should act, but
+instead of that he only excited himself more and more.
+
+“The first man that turns up—she forgets her father and everything
+else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her tail and is unlike
+herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she knew I should notice
+it. Fr... fr... fr! And don’t I see that that idiot had eyes only for
+Bourienne—I shall have to get rid of her. And how is it she has not
+pride enough to see it? If she has no pride for herself she might at
+least have some for my sake! She must be shown that the blockhead thinks
+nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but
+I’ll let her see....”
+
+The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a
+mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,
+Princess Mary’s self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to
+be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this
+thought, he called Tíkhon and began to undress.
+
+“What devil brought them here?” thought he, while Tíkhon was
+putting the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest.
+“I never invited them. They came to disturb my life—and there is not
+much of it left.”
+
+“Devil take ‘em!” he muttered, while his head was still covered by
+the shirt.
+
+Tíkhon knew his master’s habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and
+therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive expression of
+the face that emerged from the shirt.
+
+“Gone to bed?” asked the prince.
+
+Tíkhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his
+master’s thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince
+Vasíli and his son.
+
+“They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency.”
+
+“No good... no good...” said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his
+feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing
+gown, he went to the couch on which he slept.
+
+Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle Bourienne,
+they quite understood one another as to the first part of their romance,
+up to the appearance of the pauvre mère; they understood that they had
+much to say to one another in private and so they had been seeking an
+opportunity since morning to meet one another alone. When Princess Mary
+went to her father’s room at the usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne
+and Anatole met in the conservatory.
+
+Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special trepidation.
+It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that her fate would be
+decided that day, but that they also knew what she thought about it. She
+read this in Tíkhon’s face and in that of Prince Vasíli’s valet,
+who made her a low bow when she met him in the corridor carrying hot
+water.
+
+The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of
+his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking
+expression of her father’s. His face wore that expression when his
+dry hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in
+arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,
+repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.
+
+He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.
+
+“I have had a proposition made me concerning you,” he said with an
+unnatural smile. “I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasíli has
+not come and brought his pupil with him” (for some reason Prince
+Bolkónski referred to Anatole as a “pupil”) “for the sake of my
+beautiful eyes. Last night a proposition was made me on your account
+and, as you know my principles, I refer it to you.”
+
+“How am I to understand you, mon père?” said the princess, growing
+pale and then blushing.
+
+“How understand me!” cried her father angrily. “Prince Vasíli
+finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to you
+on his pupil’s behalf. That’s how it’s to be understood! ‘How
+understand it’!... And I ask you!”
+
+“I do not know what you think, Father,” whispered the princess.
+
+“I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I’m not going to
+get married. What about you? That’s what I want to know.”
+
+The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with disapproval,
+but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her fate would be
+decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not to see the gaze
+under which she felt that she could not think, but would only be able to
+submit from habit, and she said: “I wish only to do your will, but if
+I had to express my own desire...” She had no time to finish. The old
+prince interrupted her.
+
+“That’s admirable!” he shouted. “He will take you with your
+dowry and take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She’ll be the
+wife, while you...”
+
+The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on his
+daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.
+
+“Now then, now then, I’m only joking!” he said. “Remember this,
+Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to
+choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life’s happiness
+depends on your decision. Never mind me!”
+
+“But I do not know, Father!”
+
+“There’s no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry you
+or anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room, think it
+over, and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence: yes or no.
+I know you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but you had better
+think it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!” he still shouted
+when the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already staggered out of the
+study.
+
+Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had said
+about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be sure, but
+still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of it. She was
+going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing nor hearing
+anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of Mademoiselle
+Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps away saw
+Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to her. With
+a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole looked at Princess
+Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the waist of Mademoiselle
+Bourienne who had not yet seen her.
+
+“Who’s that? Why? Wait a moment!” Anatole’s face seemed to say.
+Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand it. At
+last Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole bowed to
+Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in a laugh at
+this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders went to the door
+that led to his own apartments.
+
+An hour later, Tíkhon came to call Princess Mary to the old prince;
+he added that Prince Vasíli was also there. When Tíkhon came to her
+Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding the weeping
+Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her hair. The
+princess’ beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance were
+looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
+pretty face.
+
+“No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!” said
+Mademoiselle Bourienne.
+
+“Why? I love you more than ever,” said Princess Mary, “and I will
+try to do all I can for your happiness.”
+
+“But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand being so
+carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother...”
+
+“I quite understand,” answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile.
+“Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my father,” she said, and went
+out.
+
+Prince Vasíli, with one leg thrown high over the other and a snuffbox
+in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion on his face,
+as if stirred to his heart’s core and himself regretting and laughing
+at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary entered. He hurriedly took a
+pinch of snuff.
+
+“Ah, my dear, my dear!” he began, rising and taking her by both
+hands. Then, sighing, he added: “My son’s fate is in your hands.
+Decide, my dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a
+daughter!”
+
+He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.
+
+“Fr... fr...” snorted Prince Bolkónski. “The prince is making a
+proposition to you in his pupil’s—I mean, his son’s—name. Do you
+wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kurágin’s wife? Reply: yes or no,”
+he shouted, “and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion
+also. Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion,” added Prince Bolkónski,
+turning to Prince Vasíli and answering his imploring look. “Yes, or
+no?”
+
+“My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my
+life from yours. I don’t wish to marry,” she answered positively,
+glancing at Prince Vasíli and at her father with her beautiful eyes.
+
+“Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!” cried Prince Bolkónski,
+frowning and taking his daughter’s hand; he did not kiss her, but only
+bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and pressed her hand so
+that she winced and uttered a cry.
+
+Prince Vasíli rose.
+
+“My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never
+forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching
+this heart, so kind and generous? Say ‘perhaps’... The future is so
+long. Say ‘perhaps.’”
+
+“Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you for
+the honor, but I shall never be your son’s wife.”
+
+“Well, so that’s finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have
+seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!” said
+the old prince. “Very, very glad to have seen you,” repeated he,
+embracing Prince Vasíli.
+
+“My vocation is a different one,” thought Princess Mary. “My
+vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the happiness
+of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will arrange
+poor Amélie’s happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so
+passionately repents. I will do all I can to arrange the match between
+them. If he is not rich I will give her the means; I will ask my
+father and Andrew. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so
+unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how passionately
+she must love him if she could so far forget herself! Perhaps I might
+have done the same!...” thought Princess Mary.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It was long since the Rostóvs had news of Nicholas. Not till midwinter
+was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son’s
+handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm and
+haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read the
+letter.
+
+Anna Mikháylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the house,
+on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the room and
+found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing at the same
+time.
+
+Anna Mikháylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still
+living with the Rostóvs.
+
+“My dear friend?” said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, prepared
+to sympathize in any way.
+
+The count sobbed yet more.
+
+“Nikólenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling
+boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How
+tell the little countess!”
+
+Anna Mikháylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief wiped
+the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried her
+own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and till
+teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God’s
+help, would inform her.
+
+At dinner Anna Mikháylovna talked the whole time about the war news
+and about Nikólenka, twice asked when the last letter had been received
+from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that they might
+very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each time that these
+hints began to make the countess anxious and she glanced uneasily at
+the count and at Anna Mikháylovna, the latter very adroitly turned
+the conversation to insignificant matters. Natásha, who, of the whole
+family, was the most gifted with a capacity to feel any shades of
+intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her ears from the beginning
+of the meal and was certain that there was some secret between her
+father and Anna Mikháylovna, that it had something to do with her
+brother, and that Anna Mikháylovna was preparing them for it. Bold as
+she was, Natásha, who knew how sensitive her mother was to anything
+relating to Nikólenka, did not venture to ask any questions at dinner,
+but she was too excited to eat anything and kept wriggling about on her
+chair regardless of her governess’ remarks. After dinner, she rushed
+headlong after Anna Mikháylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on
+her neck as soon as she overtook her in the sitting room.
+
+“Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!”
+
+“Nothing, my dear.”
+
+“No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won’t give up—I know you know
+something.”
+
+Anna Mikháylovna shook her head.
+
+“You are a little slyboots,” she said.
+
+“A letter from Nikólenka! I’m sure of it!” exclaimed Natásha,
+reading confirmation in Anna Mikháylovna’s face.
+
+“But for God’s sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your
+mamma.”
+
+“I will, I will, only tell me! You won’t? Then I will go and tell at
+once.”
+
+Anna Mikháylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the letter,
+on condition that she should tell no one.
+
+“No, on my true word of honor,” said Natásha, crossing herself,
+“I won’t tell anyone!” and she ran off at once to Sónya.
+
+“Nikólenka... wounded... a letter,” she announced in gleeful
+triumph.
+
+“Nicholas!” was all Sónya said, instantly turning white.
+
+Natásha, seeing the impression the news of her brother’s wound
+produced on Sónya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the
+news.
+
+She rushed to Sónya, hugged her, and began to cry.
+
+“A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
+wrote himself,” said she through her tears.
+
+“There now! It’s true that all you women are crybabies,” remarked
+Pétya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. “Now I’m very
+glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself so.
+You are all blubberers and understand nothing.”
+
+Natásha smiled through her tears.
+
+“You haven’t read the letter?” asked Sónya.
+
+“No, but she said that it was all over and that he’s now an
+officer.”
+
+“Thank God!” said Sónya, crossing herself. “But perhaps she
+deceived you. Let us go to Mamma.”
+
+Pétya paced the room in silence for a time.
+
+“If I’d been in Nikólenka’s place I would have killed even more
+of those Frenchmen,” he said. “What nasty brutes they are! I’d
+have killed so many that there’d have been a heap of them.”
+
+“Hold your tongue, Pétya, what a goose you are!”
+
+“I’m not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles,” said
+Pétya.
+
+“Do you remember him?” Natásha suddenly asked, after a moment’s
+silence.
+
+Sónya smiled.
+
+“Do I remember Nicholas?”
+
+“No, Sónya, but do you remember so that you remember him perfectly,
+remember everything?” said Natásha, with an expressive gesture,
+evidently wishing to give her words a very definite meaning. “I
+remember Nikólenka too, I remember him well,” she said. “But I
+don’t remember Borís. I don’t remember him a bit.”
+
+“What! You don’t remember Borís?” asked Sónya in surprise.
+
+“It’s not that I don’t remember—I know what he is like, but not
+as I remember Nikólenka. Him—I just shut my eyes and remember,
+but Borís... No!” (She shut her eyes.) “No! there’s nothing at
+all.”
+
+“Oh, Natásha!” said Sónya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at
+her friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant
+to say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking
+was out of the question, “I am in love with your brother once for all
+and, whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him
+as long as I live.”
+
+Natásha looked at Sónya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and said
+nothing. She felt that Sónya was speaking the truth, that there was
+such love as Sónya was speaking of. But Natásha had not yet felt
+anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
+
+“Shall you write to him?” she asked.
+
+Sónya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas, and
+whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already an
+officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of herself
+and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on
+himself?
+
+“I don’t know. I think if he writes, I will write too,” she said,
+blushing.
+
+“And you won’t feel ashamed to write to him?”
+
+Sónya smiled.
+
+“No.”
+
+“And I should be ashamed to write to Borís. I’m not going to.”
+
+“Why should you be ashamed?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know. It’s awkward and would make me ashamed.”
+
+“And I know why she’d be ashamed,” said Pétya, offended by
+Natásha’s previous remark. “It’s because she was in love with
+that fat one in spectacles” (that was how Pétya described his
+namesake, the new Count Bezúkhov) “and now she’s in love with that
+singer” (he meant Natásha’s Italian singing master), “that’s
+why she’s ashamed!”
+
+“Pétya, you’re stupid!” said Natásha.
+
+“Not more stupid than you, madam,” said the nine-year-old Pétya,
+with the air of an old brigadier.
+
+The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikháylovna’s hints at dinner.
+On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her eyes fixed on a
+miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a snuffbox, while the tears
+kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikháylovna, with the letter, came on
+tiptoe to the countess’ door and paused.
+
+“Don’t come in,” she said to the old count who was following her.
+“Come later.” And she went in, closing the door behind her.
+
+The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
+
+At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna
+Mikháylovna’s voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence,
+then both voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps.
+Anna Mikháylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud expression
+of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation and admits the
+public to appreciate his skill.
+
+“It is done!” she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the
+countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait and
+in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her lips.
+
+When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, embraced his
+bald head, over which she again looked at the letter and the portrait,
+and in order to press them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away
+the bald head. Véra, Natásha, Sónya, and Pétya now entered the room,
+and the reading of the letter began. After a brief description of
+the campaign and the two battles in which he had taken part, and his
+promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his father’s and mother’s
+hands asking for their blessing, and that he kissed Véra, Natásha, and
+Pétya. Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame
+Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him “dear
+Sónya, whom he loved and thought of just the same as ever.” When she
+heard this Sónya blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable
+to bear the looks turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall,
+whirled round it at full speed with her dress puffed out like a balloon,
+and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor. The countess was
+crying.
+
+“Why are you crying, Mamma?” asked Véra. “From all he says one
+should be glad and not cry.”
+
+This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natásha looked
+at her reproachfully. “And who is it she takes after?” thought the
+countess.
+
+Nicholas’ letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
+considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she
+did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses, and
+Dmítri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter
+each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh
+proofs of Nikólenka’s virtues. How strange, how extraordinary, how
+joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of whose
+tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom
+she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that son who
+had first learned to say “pear” and then “granny,” that this son
+should now be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly
+warrior doing some kind of man’s work of his own, without help or
+guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing that children do
+grow imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the
+countess. Her son’s growth toward manhood, at each of its stages,
+had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the
+millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty
+years before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who lived
+somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to
+speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be
+this strong, brave man, this model son and officer that, judging by this
+letter, he now was.
+
+“What a style! How charmingly he describes!” said she, reading the
+descriptive part of the letter. “And what a soul! Not a word about
+himself.... Not a word! About some Denísov or other, though he himself,
+I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about his
+sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has remembered
+everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was only so
+high—I always said....”
+
+For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of
+letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied out,
+while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of the
+count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and equipment
+of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna Mikháylovna,
+practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor with army
+authorities to secure advantageous means of communication for herself
+and her son. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand
+Duke Constantine Pávlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostóvs
+supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite a definite address,
+and that if a letter reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards
+there was no reason why it should not reach the Pávlograd regiment,
+which was presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood. And so it was
+decided to send the letters and money by the Grand Duke’s courier to
+Borís and Borís was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were from
+the old count, the countess, Pétya, Véra, Natásha, and Sónya, and
+finally there were six thousand rubles for his outfit and various other
+things the old count sent to his son.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On the twelfth of November, Kutúzov’s active army, in camp before
+Olmütz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors—the
+Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent
+the night ten miles from Olmütz and next morning were to come straight
+to the review, reaching the field at Olmütz by ten o’clock.
+
+That day Nicholas Rostóv received a letter from Borís, telling him
+that the Ismáylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles from
+Olmütz and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money for
+him. Rostóv was particularly in need of money now that the troops,
+after their active service, were stationed near Olmütz and the camp
+swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering
+all sorts of tempting wares. The Pávlograds held feast after feast,
+celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made
+expeditions to Olmütz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian,
+who had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses.
+Rostóv, who had just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought
+Denísov’s horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and
+the sutlers. On receiving Borís’ letter he rode with a fellow officer
+to Olmütz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set off alone
+to the Guards’ camp to find his old playmate. Rostóv had not yet had
+time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with
+a soldier’s cross, equally shabby cadet’s riding breeches lined with
+worn leather, and an officer’s saber with a sword knot. The Don horse
+he was riding was one he had bought from a Cossack during the campaign,
+and he wore a crumpled hussar cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his
+head. As he rode up to the camp he thought how he would impress Borís
+and all his comrades of the Guards by his appearance—that of a
+fighting hussar who had been under fire.
+
+The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip, parading
+their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy stages, their
+knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian authorities had provided
+excellent dinners for the officers at every halting place. The regiments
+had entered and left the town with their bands playing, and by the Grand
+Duke’s orders the men had marched all the way in step (a practice on
+which the Guards prided themselves), the officers on foot and at their
+proper posts. Borís had been quartered, and had marched all the
+way, with Berg who was already in command of a company. Berg, who had
+obtained his captaincy during the campaign, had gained the confidence of
+his superiors by his promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money
+matters very satisfactorily. Borís, during the campaign, had made the
+acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by
+a letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become
+acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkónski, through whom he hoped to
+obtain a post on the commander in chief’s staff. Berg and Borís,
+having rested after yesterday’s march, were sitting, clean and neatly
+dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to them,
+playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. Borís, in
+the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of
+chessmen with his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg’s move,
+and watched his opponent’s face, evidently thinking about the game as
+he always thought only of whatever he was engaged on.
+
+“Well, how are you going to get out of that?” he remarked.
+
+“We’ll try to,” replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing
+his hand.
+
+At that moment the door opened.
+
+“Here he is at last!” shouted Rostóv. “And Berg too! Oh, you
+petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!” he exclaimed, imitating his Russian
+nurse’s French, at which he and Borís used to laugh long ago.
+
+“Dear me, how you have changed!”
+
+Borís rose to meet Rostóv, but in doing so did not omit to steady and
+replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace his
+friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of youth,
+that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner
+different from that of its elders which is often insincere, Nicholas
+wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He wanted to pinch
+him, push him, do anything but kiss him—a thing everybody did. But
+notwithstanding this, Borís embraced him in a quiet, friendly way and
+kissed him three times.
+
+They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when young
+men take their first steps on life’s road, each saw immense changes in
+the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which they had taken
+those first steps. Both had changed greatly since they last met and both
+were in a hurry to show the changes that had taken place in them.
+
+“Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you’d been to a fete,
+not like us sinners of the line,” cried Rostóv, with martial swagger
+and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Borís, pointing to his own
+mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostóv’s loud
+voice, popped her head in at the door.
+
+“Eh, is she pretty?” he asked with a wink.
+
+“Why do you shout so? You’ll frighten them!” said Borís. “I did
+not expect you today,” he added. “I only sent you the note yesterday
+by Bolkónski—an adjutant of Kutúzov’s, who’s a friend of mine.
+I did not think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you?
+Been under fire already?” asked Borís.
+
+Without answering, Rostóv shook the soldier’s Cross of St. George
+fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,
+glanced at Berg with a smile.
+
+“As you see,” he said.
+
+“Indeed? Yes, yes!” said Borís, with a smile. “And we too have
+had a splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness
+rode with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and
+every advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and
+balls! I can’t tell you. And the Tsarévich was very gracious to all
+our officers.”
+
+And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of his
+hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the pleasures
+and advantages of service under members of the Imperial family.
+
+“Oh, you Guards!” said Rostóv. “I say, send for some wine.”
+
+Borís made a grimace.
+
+“If you really want it,” said he.
+
+He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and sent
+for wine.
+
+“Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you,” he added.
+
+Rostóv took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both
+arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he
+glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind the
+letter.
+
+“Well, they’ve sent you a tidy sum,” said Berg, eying the heavy
+purse that sank into the sofa. “As for us, Count, we get along on our
+pay. I can tell you for myself...”
+
+“I say, Berg, my dear fellow,” said Rostóv, “when you get a
+letter from home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk
+everything over with, and I happen to be there, I’ll go at once, to
+be out of your way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!” he
+exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking
+amiably into his face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his
+words, he added, “Don’t be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak
+from my heart as to an old acquaintance.”
+
+“Oh, don’t mention it, Count! I quite understand,” said Berg,
+getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.
+
+“Go across to our hosts: they invited you,” added Borís.
+
+Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of dust,
+stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples
+upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having
+assured himself from the way Rostóv looked at it that his coat had been
+noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.
+
+“Oh dear, what a beast I am!” muttered Rostóv, as he read the
+letter.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them
+such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!” he repeated, flushing suddenly.
+“Well, have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let’s have
+some!”
+
+In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of recommendation
+to Bagratión which the old countess at Anna Mikháylovna’s advice had
+obtained through an acquaintance and sent to her son, asking him to take
+it to its destination and make use of it.
+
+“What nonsense! Much I need it!” said Rostóv, throwing the letter
+under the table.
+
+“Why have you thrown that away?” asked Borís.
+
+“It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want it
+for!”
+
+“Why ‘What the devil’?” said Borís, picking it up and reading
+the address. “This letter would be of great use to you.”
+
+“I want nothing, and I won’t be anyone’s adjutant.”
+
+“Why not?” inquired Borís.
+
+“It’s a lackey’s job!”
+
+“You are still the same dreamer, I see,” remarked Borís, shaking
+his head.
+
+“And you’re still the same diplomatist! But that’s not the
+point... Come, how are you?” asked Rostóv.
+
+“Well, as you see. So far everything’s all right, but I confess I
+should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try to
+make as successful a career of it as possible.”
+
+“Oh, that’s it!” said Rostóv, evidently thinking of something
+else.
+
+He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend’s eyes, evidently
+trying in vain to find the answer to some question.
+
+Old Gabriel brought in the wine.
+
+“Shouldn’t we now send for Berg?” asked Borís. “He would drink
+with you. I can’t.”
+
+“Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?”
+asked Rostóv, with a contemptuous smile.
+
+“He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow,” answered
+Borís.
+
+Again Rostóv looked intently into Borís’ eyes and sighed. Berg
+returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three
+officers became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostóv of their march and
+how they had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They spoke
+of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke, and told
+stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual, kept silent
+when the subject did not relate to himself, but in connection with the
+stories of the Grand Duke’s quick temper he related with gusto how in
+Galicia he had managed to deal with the Grand Duke when the latter
+made a tour of the regiments and was annoyed at the irregularity of
+a movement. With a pleasant smile Berg related how the Grand Duke
+had ridden up to him in a violent passion, shouting: “Arnauts!”
+(“Arnauts” was the Tsarévich’s favorite expression when he was in
+a rage) and called for the company commander.
+
+“Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I knew
+I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know the Army
+Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do the Lord’s
+Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my company, and
+so my conscience was at ease. I came forward....” (Berg stood up and
+showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his cap, and really
+it would have been difficult for a face to express greater respect and
+self-complacency than his did.) “Well, he stormed at me, as the saying
+is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It was not a matter of life but
+rather of death, as the saying is. ‘Albanians!’ and ‘devils!’
+and ‘To Siberia!’” said Berg with a sagacious smile. “I knew I
+was in the right so I kept silent; was not that best, Count?... ‘Hey,
+are you dumb?’ he shouted. Still I remained silent. And what do you
+think, Count? The next day it was not even mentioned in the Orders of
+the Day. That’s what keeping one’s head means. That’s the way,
+Count,” said Berg, lighting his pipe and emitting rings of smoke.
+
+“Yes, that was fine,” said Rostóv, smiling.
+
+But Borís noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and
+skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and where
+he got his wound. This pleased Rostóv and he began talking about it,
+and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of his
+Schön Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a battle
+generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to have been,
+as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds well, but not
+at all as it really was. Rostóv was a truthful young man and would on
+no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story meaning to
+tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, involuntarily,
+and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told the truth to his
+hearers—who like himself had often heard stories of attacks and had
+formed a definite idea of what an attack was and were expecting to hear
+just such a story—they would either not have believed him or, still
+worse, would have thought that Rostóv was himself to blame since what
+generally happens to the narrators of cavalry attacks had not happened
+to him. He could not tell them simply that everyone went at a trot and
+that he fell off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran as hard as
+he could from a Frenchman into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as
+it really happened, it would have been necessary to make an effort of
+will to tell only what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth,
+and young people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story
+of how beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like
+a storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his
+saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And so he
+told them all that.
+
+In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: “You cannot imagine
+what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack,” Prince
+Andrew, whom Borís was expecting, entered the room. Prince Andrew, who
+liked to help young men, was flattered by being asked for his assistance
+and being well disposed toward Borís, who had managed to please him the
+day before, he wished to do what the young man wanted. Having been sent
+with papers from Kutúzov to the Tsarévich, he looked in on Borís,
+hoping to find him alone. When he came in and saw an hussar of the line
+recounting his military exploits (Prince Andrew could not endure
+that sort of man), he gave Borís a pleasant smile, frowned as with
+half-closed eyes he looked at Rostóv, bowed slightly and wearily, and
+sat down languidly on the sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped
+in on bad company. Rostóv flushed up on noticing this, but he did not
+care, this was a mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Borís, he saw
+that he too seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line.
+
+In spite of Prince Andrew’s disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of
+the contempt with which Rostóv, from his fighting army point of view,
+regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the newcomer
+was evidently one, Rostóv felt confused, blushed, and became silent.
+Borís inquired what news there might be on the staff, and what, without
+indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.
+
+“We shall probably advance,” replied Bolkónski, evidently reluctant
+to say more in the presence of a stranger.
+
+Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as was
+rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies would be
+doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that he could
+give no opinion on such an important government order, and Berg laughed
+gaily.
+
+“As to your business,” Prince Andrew continued, addressing Borís,
+“we will talk of it later” (and he looked round at Rostóv). “Come
+to me after the review and we will do what is possible.”
+
+And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to Rostóv,
+whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now changing to
+anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: “I think you were
+talking of the Schön Grabern affair? Were you there?”
+
+“I was there,” said Rostóv angrily, as if intending to insult the
+aide-de-camp.
+
+Bolkónski noticed the hussar’s state of mind, and it amused him. With
+a slightly contemptuous smile, he said: “Yes, there are many stories
+now told about that affair!”
+
+“Yes, stories!” repeated Rostóv loudly, looking with eyes suddenly
+grown furious, now at Borís, now at Bolkónski. “Yes, many stories!
+But our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy’s
+fire! Our stories have some weight, not like the stories of those
+fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing anything!”
+
+“Of whom you imagine me to be one?” said Prince Andrew, with a quiet
+and particularly amiable smile.
+
+A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this man’s
+self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostóv’s soul.
+
+“I am not talking about you,” he said, “I don’t know you and,
+frankly, I don’t want to. I am speaking of the staff in general.”
+
+“And I will tell you this,” Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of
+quiet authority, “you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree with
+you that it would be very easy to do so if you haven’t sufficient
+self-respect, but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen.
+In a day or two we shall all have to take part in a greater and more
+serious duel, and besides, Drubetskóy, who says he is an old friend
+of yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to
+displease you. However,” he added rising, “you know my name and
+where to find me, but don’t forget that I do not regard either myself
+or you as having been at all insulted, and as a man older than you, my
+advice is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday after the review
+I shall expect you, Drubetskóy. Au revoir!” exclaimed Prince Andrew,
+and with a bow to them both he went out.
+
+Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostóv think of what he ought to
+have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He
+ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Borís, rode
+home. Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that affected
+adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question that worried
+him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he would have at
+seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud man when covered by
+his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of all the men he knew
+there was none he would so much like to have for a friend as that very
+adjutant whom he so hated.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The day after Rostóv had been to see Borís, a review was held of the
+Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia and
+those who had been campaigning under Kutúzov. The two Emperors,
+the Russian with his heir the Tsarévich, and the Austrian with the
+Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.
+
+From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move, forming up
+on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and bayonets
+moved and halted at the officers’ command, turned with banners flying,
+formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other similar masses of
+infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the rhythmic beat of
+hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red, and green braided
+uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front mounted on black, roan,
+or gray horses; then again, spreading out with the brazen clatter of the
+polished shining cannon that quivered on the gun carriages and with
+the smell of linstocks, came the artillery which crawled between the
+infantry and cavalry and took up its appointed position. Not only the
+generals in full parade uniforms, with their thin or thick waists drawn
+in to the utmost, their red necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and
+wearing scarves and all their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded
+officers, but every soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and
+his weapons clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed
+till its coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay
+smooth—felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and
+solemn affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own
+insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and
+yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that
+enormous whole.
+
+From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by ten
+o’clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were drawn
+up on the vast field. The whole army was extended in three lines: the
+cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind that again the
+infantry.
+
+A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The
+three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutúzov’s
+fighting army (with the Pávlograds on the right flank of the front);
+those recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the
+line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines,
+under one command, and in a like order.
+
+Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: “They’re coming!
+They’re coming!” Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final
+preparation swept over all the troops.
+
+From the direction of Olmütz in front of them, a group was seen
+approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light gust
+of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on the
+lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their staffs. It
+looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was expressing its
+joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard shouting:
+“Eyes front!” Then, like the crowing of cocks at sunrise, this was
+repeated by others from various sides and all became silent.
+
+In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard. This
+was the Emperors’ suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank, and the
+trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general march. It
+seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as if the army
+itself, rejoicing at the Emperors’ approach, had naturally burst into
+music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of the Emperor
+Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of greeting, and the
+first regiment roared “Hurrah!” so deafeningly, continuously, and
+joyfully that the men themselves were awed by their multitude and the
+immensity of the power they constituted.
+
+Rostóv, standing in the front lines of Kutúzov’s army which the Tsar
+approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in
+that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of
+might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this
+triumph.
+
+He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass (and he
+himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and water,
+commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and so he could
+not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence of that word.
+
+“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” thundered from all sides, one regiment
+after another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and then
+“Hurrah!”... Then the general march, and again “Hurrah! Hurrah!”
+growing ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening roar.
+
+Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and immobility
+seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it became alive,
+its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along which he had
+already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar of those voices,
+amid the square masses of troops standing motionless as if turned to
+stone, hundreds of riders composing the suites moved carelessly but
+symmetrically and above all freely, and in front of them two men—the
+Emperors. Upon them the undivided, tensely passionate attention of that
+whole mass of men was concentrated.
+
+The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse
+Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his
+pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone’s
+attention.
+
+Rostóv was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight had
+recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within twenty
+paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of his
+handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling of tenderness
+and ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every
+movement of the Tsar’s seemed to him enchanting.
+
+Stopping in front of the Pávlograds, the Tsar said something in French
+to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.
+
+Seeing that smile, Rostóv involuntarily smiled himself and felt a still
+stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show that love in
+some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready to cry. The Tsar
+called the colonel of the regiment and said a few words to him.
+
+“Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?”
+thought Rostóv. “I should die of happiness!”
+
+The Tsar addressed the officers also: “I thank you all, gentlemen, I
+thank you with my whole heart.” To Rostóv every word sounded like a
+voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!
+
+“You have earned the St. George’s standards and will be worthy of
+them.”
+
+“Oh, to die, to die for him,” thought Rostóv.
+
+The Tsar said something more which Rostóv did not hear, and the
+soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted “Hurrah!”
+
+Rostóv too, bending over his saddle, shouted “Hurrah!” with all his
+might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, if
+only to express his rapture fully.
+
+The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if undecided.
+
+“How can the Emperor be undecided?” thought Rostóv, but then even
+this indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like everything
+else the Tsar did.
+
+That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar’s foot, in the narrow
+pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the bobtailed bay
+mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up the reins, and he
+moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying sea of aides-de-camp.
+Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at other regiments, till at
+last only his white plumes were visible to Rostóv from amid the suites
+that surrounded the Emperors.
+
+Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostóv noticed Bolkónski, sitting
+his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostóv recalled their quarrel of
+yesterday and the question presented itself whether he ought or ought
+not to challenge Bolkónski. “Of course not!” he now thought. “Is
+it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment? At a time of such
+love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do any of our quarrels
+and affronts matter? I love and forgive everybody now.”
+
+When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops began
+a ceremonial march past him, and Rostóv on Bedouin, recently purchased
+from Denísov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron—that is,
+alone and in full view of the Emperor.
+
+Before he reached him, Rostóv, who was a splendid horseman, spurred
+Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in which the
+animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to his chest, his
+tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the Emperor’s eye
+upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a high and graceful
+action, as if flying through the air without touching the ground.
+
+Rostóv himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and feeling
+himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a frowning but
+blissful face “like a vewy devil,” as Denísov expressed it.
+
+“Fine fellows, the Pávlograds!” remarked the Emperor.
+
+“My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the fire
+this instant!” thought Rostóv.
+
+When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also
+Kutúzov’s, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards,
+about the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about
+Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if the
+Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side.
+
+But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander. His
+every word and movement was described with ecstasy.
+
+They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against the
+enemy under the Emperor’s command. Commanded by the Emperor himself
+they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: so thought
+Rostóv and most of the officers after the review.
+
+All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two battles
+would have made them.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The day after the review, Borís, in his best uniform and with his
+comrade Berg’s best wishes for success, rode to Olmütz to see
+Bolkónski, wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for himself
+the best post he could—preferably that of adjutant to some important
+personage, a position in the army which seemed to him most attractive.
+“It is all very well for Rostóv, whose father sends him ten thousand
+rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe to anybody and not
+be anyone’s lackey, but I who have nothing but my brains have to
+make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must avail myself of
+them!” he reflected.
+
+He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmütz that day, but the appearance of
+the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were stationed
+and the two Emperors were living with their suites, households, and
+courts only strengthened his desire to belong to that higher world.
+
+He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman’s uniform, all these
+exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages
+with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military
+men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the
+Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be
+aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief,
+Kutúzov, where he inquired for Bolkónski, all the adjutants and even
+the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a
+great many officers like him were always coming there and that everybody
+was heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather because of
+it, next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to Olmütz and,
+entering the house occupied by Kutúzov, asked for Bolkónski. Prince
+Andrew was in and Borís was shown into a large hall probably formerly
+used for dancing, but in which five beds now stood, and furniture of
+various kinds: a table, chairs, and a clavichord. One adjutant, nearest
+the door, was sitting at the table in a Persian dressing gown, writing.
+Another, the red, stout Nesvítski, lay on a bed with his arms under his
+head, laughing with an officer who had sat down beside him. A third was
+playing a Viennese waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on
+the clavichord, sang the tune. Bolkónski was not there. None of these
+gentlemen changed his position on seeing Borís. The one who was writing
+and whom Borís addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkónski
+was on duty and that he should go through the door on the left into the
+reception room if he wished to see him. Borís thanked him and went to
+the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.
+
+When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously (with
+that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says, “If
+it were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment”), was
+listening to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very
+erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier’s obsequious expression on his
+purple face, reporting something.
+
+“Very well, then, be so good as to wait,” said Prince Andrew to the
+general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he affected
+when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Borís, Prince
+Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him imploring
+him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with a cheerful
+smile.
+
+At that moment Borís clearly realized what he had before surmised, that
+in the army, besides the subordination and discipline prescribed in the
+military code, which he and the others knew in the regiment, there was
+another, more important, subordination, which made this tight-laced,
+purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain Prince Andrew, for
+his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant Drubetskóy. More than
+ever was Borís resolved to serve in future not according to the written
+code, but under this unwritten law. He felt now that merely by having
+been recommended to Prince Andrew he had already risen above the general
+who at the front had the power to annihilate him, a lieutenant of the
+Guards. Prince Andrew came up to him and took his hand.
+
+“I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about
+with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions.
+When Germans start being accurate, there’s no end to it!”
+
+Borís smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to
+as something generally known. But it was the first time he had heard
+Weyrother’s name, or even the term “dispositions.”
+
+“Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have
+been thinking about you.”
+
+“Yes, I was thinking”—for some reason Borís could not help
+blushing—“of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter from
+Prince Kurágin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear the Guards
+won’t be in action,” he added as if in apology.
+
+“All right, all right. We’ll talk it over,” replied Prince Andrew.
+“Only let me report this gentleman’s business, and I shall be at
+your disposal.”
+
+While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general, that
+gentleman—evidently not sharing Borís’ conception of the advantages
+of the unwritten code of subordination—looked so fixedly at the
+presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he had to
+say to the adjutant that Borís felt uncomfortable. He turned away and
+waited impatiently for Prince Andrew’s return from the commander in
+chief’s room.
+
+“You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you,”
+said Prince Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the
+clavichord was. “It’s no use your going to the commander in chief.
+He would say a lot of pleasant things, ask you to dinner” (“That
+would not be bad as regards the unwritten code,” thought Borís),
+“but nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a battalion of
+us aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is what we’ll do: I have
+a good friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince
+Dolgorúkov; and though you may not know it, the fact is that now
+Kutúzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything is
+now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to Dolgorúkov; I have to
+go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him about you. We shall
+see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find a place for you
+somewhere nearer the sun.”
+
+Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a young
+man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining help
+of this kind for another, which from pride he would never accept for
+himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers success and
+which attracted him. He very readily took up Borís’ cause and went
+with him to Dolgorúkov.
+
+It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmütz
+occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.
+
+That same day a council of war had been held in which all the members of
+the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that council, contrary
+to the views of the old generals Kutúzov and Prince Schwartzenberg, it
+had been decided to advance immediately and give battle to Bonaparte.
+The council of war was just over when Prince Andrew accompanied
+by Borís arrived at the palace to find Dolgorúkov. Everyone at
+headquarters was still under the spell of the day’s council, at which
+the party of the young had triumphed. The voices of those who counseled
+delay and advised waiting for something else before advancing had been
+so completely silenced and their arguments confuted by such conclusive
+evidence of the advantages of attacking that what had been discussed
+at the council—the coming battle and the victory that would certainly
+result from it—no longer seemed to be in the future but in the past.
+All the advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly
+superior to Napoleon’s, were concentrated in one place, the troops
+inspired by the Emperors’ presence were eager for action. The
+strategic position where the operations would take place was familiar in
+all its details to the Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had
+ordained that the Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on the
+very fields where the French had now to be fought; the adjacent
+locality was known and shown in every detail on the maps, and Bonaparte,
+evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing.
+
+Dolgorúkov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just
+returned from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud
+of the victory that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his
+protégé, but Prince Dolgorúkov politely and firmly pressing his hand
+said nothing to Borís and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts
+which were uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince Andrew
+in French.
+
+“Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that
+the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However, dear
+fellow,” he said abruptly and eagerly, “I must confess to having
+been unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother. What
+exactitude, what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what
+foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to the smallest
+detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions better than our present ones
+could have been devised. This combination of Austrian precision with
+Russian valor—what more could be wished for?”
+
+“So the attack is definitely resolved on?” asked Bolkónski.
+
+“And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte has
+decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received from him
+today for the Emperor.” Dolgorúkov smiled significantly.
+
+“Is that so? And what did he say?” inquired Bolkónski.
+
+“What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain time.
+I tell you he is in our hands, that’s certain! But what was most
+amusing,” he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, “was that
+we could not think how to address the reply! If not as ‘Consul’
+and of course not as ‘Emperor,’ it seemed to me it should be to
+‘General Bonaparte.’”
+
+“But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him General
+Bonaparte, there is a difference,” remarked Bolkónski.
+
+“That’s just it,” interrupted Dolgorúkov quickly, laughing.
+“You know Bilíbin—he’s a very clever fellow. He suggested
+addressing him as ‘Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.’”
+
+Dolgorúkov laughed merrily.
+
+“Only that?” said Bolkónski.
+
+“All the same, it was Bilíbin who found a suitable form for the
+address. He is a wise and clever fellow.”
+
+“What was it?”
+
+“To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
+français,” said Dolgorúkov, with grave satisfaction. “Good,
+wasn’t it?”
+
+“Yes, but he will dislike it extremely,” said Bolkónski.
+
+“Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he’s dined with him—the
+present Emperor—more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met a
+more cunning or subtle diplomatist—you know, a combination of French
+adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale about him and
+Count Markóv? Count Markóv was the only man who knew how to handle
+him. You know the story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!”
+
+And the talkative Dolgorúkov, turning now to Borís, now to Prince
+Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markóv, our ambassador,
+purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking
+at Markóv, probably expecting Markóv to pick it up for him, and how
+Markóv immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up without
+touching Bonaparte’s.
+
+“Delightful!” said Bolkónski. “But I have come to you, Prince,
+as a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see...” but
+before Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon
+Dolgorúkov to the Emperor.
+
+“Oh, what a nuisance,” said Dolgorúkov, getting up hurriedly and
+pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Borís. “You know I should
+be very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young
+man.” Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of
+good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. “But you see... another
+time!”
+
+Borís was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher powers
+as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious that here
+he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the enormous
+movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt himself a tiny,
+obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince Dolgorúkov out
+into the corridor and met—coming out of the door of the Emperor’s
+room by which Dolgorúkov had entered—a short man in civilian clothes
+with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw which, without spoiling
+his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and shiftiness of expression.
+This short man nodded to Dolgorúkov as to an intimate friend and stared
+at Prince Andrew with cool intensity, walking straight toward him and
+evidently expecting him to bow or to step out of his way. Prince Andrew
+did neither: a look of animosity appeared on his face and the other
+turned away and went down the side of the corridor.
+
+“Who was that?” asked Borís.
+
+“He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of
+men—the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartorýski.... It
+is such men as he who decide the fate of nations,” added Bolkónski
+with a sigh he could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.
+
+Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle of
+Austerlitz, Borís was unable to see either Prince Andrew or Dolgorúkov
+again and remained for a while with the Ismáylov regiment.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denísov’s squadron, in
+which Nicholas Rostóv served and which was in Prince Bagratión’s
+detachment, moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing
+into action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for
+about two thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostóv saw the
+Cossacks and then the first and second squadrons of hussars and infantry
+battalions and artillery pass by and go forward and then Generals
+Bagratión and Dolgorúkov ride past with their adjutants. All the fear
+before action which he had experienced as previously, all the inner
+struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of distinguishing himself
+as a true hussar in this battle, had been wasted. Their squadron
+remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostóv spent that day in a dull and
+wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard firing in front and
+shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought back (there were not
+many of them), and at last he saw how a whole detachment of French
+cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sótnya of Cossacks. Evidently the
+affair was over and, though not big, had been a successful engagement.
+The men and officers returning spoke of a brilliant victory, of the
+occupation of the town of Wischau and the capture of a whole French
+squadron. The day was bright and sunny after a sharp night frost, and
+the cheerful glitter of that autumn day was in keeping with the news of
+victory which was conveyed, not only by the tales of those who had taken
+part in it, but also by the joyful expression on the faces of soldiers,
+officers, generals, and adjutants, as they passed Rostóv going or
+coming. And Nicholas, who had vainly suffered all the dread that
+precedes a battle and had spent that happy day in inactivity, was all
+the more depressed.
+
+“Come here, Wostóv. Let’s dwink to dwown our gwief!” shouted
+Denísov, who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some
+food.
+
+The officers gathered round Denísov’s canteen, eating and talking.
+
+“There! They are bringing another!” cried one of the officers,
+indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot by
+two Cossacks.
+
+One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he had
+taken from the prisoner.
+
+“Sell us that horse!” Denísov called out to the Cossacks.
+
+“If you like, your honor!”
+
+The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner.
+The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German
+accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when
+he heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,
+addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been
+taken, it was not his fault but the corporal’s who had sent him to
+seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were there.
+And at every word he added: “But don’t hurt my little horse!” and
+stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where he
+was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,
+imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly
+discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our
+rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which was
+so alien to us.
+
+The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostóv, being the
+richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought it.
+
+“But don’t hurt my little horse!” said the Alsatian good-naturedly
+to Rostóv when the animal was handed over to the hussar.
+
+Rostóv smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.
+
+“Alley! Alley!” said the Cossack, touching the prisoner’s arm to
+make him go on.
+
+“The Emperor! The Emperor!” was suddenly heard among the hussars.
+
+All began to run and bustle, and Rostóv saw coming up the road behind
+him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment everyone
+was in his place, waiting.
+
+Rostóv did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.
+Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected mood
+amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every thought of
+himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his nearness to
+the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made up to him for the
+day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the longed-for moment of
+meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and without looking round, he
+was ecstatically conscious of his approach. He felt it not only from the
+sound of the hoofs of the approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew
+near everything grew brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more
+festive around him. Nearer and nearer to Rostóv came that sun shedding
+beams of mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself
+enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm,
+and majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with
+Rostóv’s feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard
+the Emperor’s voice.
+
+“The Pávlograd hussars?” he inquired.
+
+“The reserves, sire!” replied a voice, a very human one compared to
+that which had said: “The Pávlograd hussars?”
+
+The Emperor drew level with Rostóv and halted. Alexander’s face was
+even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the review. It
+shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that it suggested
+the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was the face
+of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the squadron, the
+Emperor’s eyes met Rostóv’s and rested on them for not more than
+two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going on in
+Rostóv’s soul (it seemed to Rostóv that he understood everything),
+at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two seconds into
+Rostóv’s face. A gentle, mild light poured from them. Then all at
+once he raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left
+foot, and galloped on.
+
+The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the
+battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at twelve
+o’clock left the third column with which he had been and galloped
+toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars, several
+adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the action.
+
+This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron, was
+represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the
+Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over
+the battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were
+retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had
+passed, the Pávlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau
+itself, a petty German town, Rostóv saw the Emperor again. In the
+market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
+Emperor’s arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom there
+had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his suite
+of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a
+different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and bending
+to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes and looked
+at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered head. The
+wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his proximity
+to the Emperor shocked Rostóv. Rostóv saw how the Emperor’s rather
+round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how his
+left foot began convulsively tapping the horse’s side with the spur,
+and how the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did not
+stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms to
+place him on a stretcher that had been brought. The soldier groaned.
+
+“Gently, gently! Can’t you do it more gently?” said the Emperor
+apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
+
+Rostóv saw tears filling the Emperor’s eyes and heard him, as he was
+riding away, say to Czartorýski: “What a terrible thing war is: what
+a terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!”
+
+The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within sight
+of the enemy’s lines, which all day long had yielded ground to us
+at the least firing. The Emperor’s gratitude was announced to the
+vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double ration of
+vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers’ songs resounded
+even more merrily than on the previous night. Denísov celebrated his
+promotion to the rank of major, and Rostóv, who had already drunk
+enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor’s health. “Not
+‘our Sovereign, the Emperor,’ as they say at official dinners,”
+said he, “but the health of our Sovereign, that good, enchanting, and
+great man! Let us drink to his health and to the certain defeat of the
+French!”
+
+“If we fought before,” he said, “not letting the French pass, as
+at Schön Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We
+will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not
+saying it right, I have drunk a good deal—but that is how I feel, and
+so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!”
+
+“Hurrah!” rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
+
+And the old cavalry captain, Kírsten, shouted enthusiastically and no
+less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostóv.
+
+When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kírsten filled
+others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand to the
+soldiers’ bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white chest
+showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the light
+of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.
+
+“Lads! here’s to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over
+our enemies! Hurrah!” he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar’s
+baritone.
+
+The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.
+
+Late that night, when all had separated, Denísov with his short hand
+patted his favorite, Rostóv, on the shoulder.
+
+“As there’s no one to fall in love with on campaign, he’s fallen
+in love with the Tsar,” he said.
+
+“Denísov, don’t make fun of it!” cried Rostóv. “It is such a
+lofty, beautiful feeling, such a...”
+
+“I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove...”
+
+“No, you don’t understand!”
+
+And Rostóv got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of
+what happiness it would be to die—not in saving the Emperor’s life
+(he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his
+eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian
+arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to
+experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle
+of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in
+love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the
+Russian arms.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his physician,
+was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and among the troops
+near by the news spread that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing and
+had slept badly that night, those around him reported. The cause of this
+indisposition was the strong impression made on his sensitive mind by
+the sight of the killed and wounded.
+
+At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with
+a flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
+brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
+Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday
+he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off with
+Prince Dolgorúkov to the advanced post of the French army.
+
+It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander
+a meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
+personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
+Dolgorúkov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
+with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
+actuated by a real desire for peace.
+
+Toward evening Dolgorúkov came back, went straight to the Tsar, and
+remained alone with him for a long time.
+
+On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced two
+days’ march and the enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange
+of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the
+nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till
+the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz
+was fought.
+
+Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity—the eager talk, running to
+and fro, and dispatching of adjutants—was confined to the Emperor’s
+headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this activity reached
+Kutúzov’s headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns.
+By evening, the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the
+army, and in the night from the nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole
+eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of
+voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles
+long.
+
+The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s
+headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that
+followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower
+clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third,
+and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to
+work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with
+regular motion as a result of all that activity.
+
+Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military
+machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as
+indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted
+to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet
+reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and
+the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a
+neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared
+to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever
+catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins
+in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
+
+Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable
+wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the
+hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human
+activities of 160,000 Russians and French—all their passions, desires,
+remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and
+enthusiasm—was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the
+so-called battle of the three Emperors—that is to say, a slow movement
+of the hand on the dial of human history.
+
+Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
+commander in chief.
+
+At six in the evening, Kutúzov went to the Emperor’s headquarters
+and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
+marshal of the court, Count Tolstóy.
+
+Bolkónski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
+coming action from Dolgorúkov. He felt that Kutúzov was upset
+and dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
+dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor’s headquarters
+everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something others do
+not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorúkov.
+
+“Well, how d’you do, my dear fellow?” said Dolgorúkov, who was
+sitting at tea with Bilíbin. “The fete is for tomorrow. How is your
+old fellow? Out of sorts?”
+
+“I won’t say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be
+heard.”
+
+“But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he
+talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte
+fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible.”
+
+“Yes, you have seen him?” said Prince Andrew. “Well, what is
+Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?”
+
+“Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as
+a general engagement,” repeated Dolgorúkov, evidently prizing this
+general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with
+Napoleon. “If he weren’t afraid of a battle why did he ask for that
+interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat is
+so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is afraid,
+afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!”
+
+“But tell me, what is he like, eh?” said Prince Andrew again.
+
+“He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call
+him ‘Your Majesty,’ but who, to his chagrin, got no title from
+me! That’s the sort of man he is, and nothing more,” replied
+Dolgorúkov, looking round at Bilíbin with a smile.
+
+“Despite my great respect for old Kutúzov,” he continued, “we
+should be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him
+a chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in
+our hands! No, we mustn’t forget Suvórov and his rule—not to put
+yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe
+me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than all
+the experience of old Cunctators.”
+
+“But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
+outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces are
+situated,” said Prince Andrew.
+
+He wished to explain to Dolgorúkov a plan of attack he had himself
+formed.
+
+“Oh, that is all the same,” Dolgorúkov said quickly, and getting up
+he spread a map on the table. “All eventualities have been foreseen.
+If he is standing before Brünn...”
+
+And Prince Dolgorúkov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother’s
+plan of a flanking movement.
+
+Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might
+have been as good as Weyrother’s, but for the disadvantage that
+Weyrother’s had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began
+to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan,
+Prince Dolgorúkov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not
+at the map, but at Prince Andrew’s face.
+
+“There will be a council of war at Kutúzov’s tonight, though; you
+can say all this there,” remarked Dolgorúkov.
+
+“I will do so,” said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
+
+“Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?” said Bilíbin, who,
+till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and
+now was evidently ready with a joke. “Whether tomorrow brings
+victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your
+Kutúzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column! The
+commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le Prince de
+Lichtenstein, le Prince de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so on
+like all those Polish names.”
+
+“Be quiet, backbiter!” said Dolgorúkov. “It is not true; there
+are now two Russians, Milorádovich, and Dokhtúrov, and there would be
+a third, Count Arakchéev, if his nerves were not too weak.”
+
+“However, I think General Kutúzov has come out,” said Prince
+Andrew. “I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!” he added and
+went out after shaking hands with Dolgorúkov and Bilíbin.
+
+On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutúzov,
+who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow’s
+battle.
+
+Kutúzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied:
+“I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstóy and
+asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? ‘But, my
+dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military
+matters yourself!’ Yes... That was the answer I got!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Shortly after nine o’clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his
+plans to Kutúzov’s quarters where the council of war was to be
+held. All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in
+chief’s and with the exception of Prince Bagratión, who declined to
+come, were all there at the appointed time.
+
+Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
+eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the dissatisfied
+and drowsy Kutúzov, who reluctantly played the part of chairman and
+president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be
+at the head of a movement that had already become unrestrainable. He was
+like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he was
+pulling it or being pushed by it he did not know, but rushed along at
+headlong speed with no time to consider what this movement might lead
+to. Weyrother had been twice that evening to the enemy’s picket
+line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and
+Austrian, to report and explain, and to his headquarters where he had
+dictated the dispositions in German, and now, much exhausted, he arrived
+at Kutúzov’s.
+
+He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
+commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and indistinctly,
+without looking at the man he was addressing, and did not reply to
+questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had a pitiful,
+weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was haughty and
+self-confident.
+
+Kutúzov was occupying a nobleman’s castle of modest dimensions near
+Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the commander
+in chief’s office were gathered Kutúzov himself, Weyrother, and the
+members of the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited
+Prince Bagratión to begin the council. At last Bagratión’s orderly
+came with the news that the prince could not attend. Prince Andrew came
+in to inform the commander in chief of this and, availing himself
+of permission previously given him by Kutúzov to be present at the
+council, he remained in the room.
+
+“Since Prince Bagratión is not coming, we may begin,” said
+Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on
+which an enormous map of the environs of Brünn was spread out.
+
+Kutúzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over
+his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low chair,
+with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound
+of Weyrother’s voice, he opened his one eye with an effort.
+
+“Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late,” said he, and nodding
+his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
+
+If at first the members of the council thought that Kutúzov was
+pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading that
+followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was absorbed
+by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his contempt for
+the dispositions or anything else—he was engaged in satisfying the
+irresistible human need for sleep. He really was asleep. Weyrother, with
+the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced at Kutúzov and,
+having convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a paper and in
+a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the dispositions for the
+impending battle, under a heading which he also read out:
+
+“Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz and
+Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805.”
+
+The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began as
+follows:
+
+“As the enemy’s left wing rests on wooded hills and his right
+extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there,
+while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his
+right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy’s latter wing especially
+if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we
+can both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between
+Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of
+Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy’s front. For this
+object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The second
+column marches... The third column marches...” and so on, read
+Weyrother.
+
+The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult dispositions.
+The tall, fair-haired General Buxhöwden stood, leaning his back against
+the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and seemed not to listen
+or even to wish to be thought to listen. Exactly opposite Weyrother,
+with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon him and his mustache
+twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Milorádovich in a military pose, his
+elbows turned outwards, his hands on his knees, and his shoulders
+raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at Weyrother’s face,
+and only turned away his eyes when the Austrian chief of staff finished
+reading. Then Milorádovich looked round significantly at the other
+generals. But one could not tell from that significant look whether he
+agreed or disagreed and was satisfied or not with the arrangements. Next
+to Weyrother sat Count Langeron who, with a subtle smile that never left
+his typically southern French face during the whole time of the reading,
+gazed at his delicate fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners
+a gold snuffbox on which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the
+longest sentences, he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised
+his head, and with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his
+thin lips interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the
+Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his
+elbows, as if to say: “You can tell me your views later, but now be so
+good as to look at the map and listen.” Langeron lifted his eyes with
+an expression of perplexity, turned round to Milorádovich as if seeking
+an explanation, but meeting the latter’s impressive but meaningless
+gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.
+
+“A geography lesson!” he muttered as if to himself, but loud enough
+to be heard.
+
+Przebyszéwski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his
+hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
+attention. Dohktúrov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with
+an assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
+conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar locality. He
+asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not clearly heard
+and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and Dohktúrov
+noted them down.
+
+When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron again
+brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or at
+anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry out
+such a plan in which the enemy’s position was assumed to be known,
+whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
+Langeron’s objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief
+aim was to show General Weyrother—who had read his dispositions with
+as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children—that
+he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him something
+in military matters.
+
+When the monotonous sound of Weyrother’s voice ceased, Kutúzov opened
+his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel
+is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking,
+“So you are still at that silly business!” quickly closed his eye
+again, and let his head sink still lower.
+
+Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother’s vanity
+as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily
+attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this
+plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and
+contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all objections
+be they what they might.
+
+“If he could attack us, he would have done so today,” said he.
+
+“So you think he is powerless?” said Langeron.
+
+“He has forty thousand men at most,” replied Weyrother, with the
+smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of
+a case.
+
+“In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,” said
+Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round for support
+to Milorádovich who was near him.
+
+But Milorádovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
+rather than of what the generals were disputing about.
+
+“Ma foi!” said he, “tomorrow we shall see all that on the
+battlefield.”
+
+Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it was
+strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals and to
+have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced himself of, but
+had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
+
+“The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard from
+his camp,” said he. “What does that mean? Either he is retreating,
+which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing his position.”
+(He smiled ironically.) “But even if he also took up a position in
+the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of trouble and all our
+arrangements to the minutest detail remain the same.”
+
+“How is that?...” began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting
+an opportunity to express his doubts.
+
+Kutúzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the
+generals.
+
+“Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow—or rather for today, for
+it is past midnight—cannot now be altered,” said he. “You have
+heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there is
+nothing more important...” he paused, “than to have a good sleep.”
+
+He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was past
+midnight. Prince Andrew went out.
+
+The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to
+express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy
+impression. Whether Dolgorúkov and Weyrother, or Kutúzov, Langeron,
+and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were
+right—he did not know. “But was it really not possible for Kutúzov
+to state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on
+account of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives,
+and my life, my life,” he thought, “must be risked?”
+
+“Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,” he
+thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of most
+distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he remembered
+his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the days
+when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for
+her and for himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he
+went out of the hut in which he was billeted with Nesvítski and began
+to walk up and down before it.
+
+The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed
+mysteriously. “Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!” he thought. “Tomorrow
+everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more, none
+of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even certainly,
+I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall have to show all
+I can do.” And his fancy pictured the battle, its loss, the
+concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all the
+commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for which he had
+so long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly and clearly
+expresses his opinion to Kutúzov, to Weyrother, and to the Emperors.
+All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one undertakes to
+carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division—stipulates that no
+one is to interfere with his arrangements—leads his division to
+the decisive point, and gains the victory alone. “But death and
+suffering?” suggested another voice. Prince Andrew, however, did not
+answer that voice and went on dreaming of his triumphs. The dispositions
+for the next battle are planned by him alone. Nominally he is only an
+adjutant on Kutúzov’s staff, but he does everything alone. The next
+battle is won by him alone. Kutúzov is removed and he is appointed...
+“Well and then?” asked the other voice. “If before that you are
+not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed, well... what then?...”
+“Well then,” Prince Andrew answered himself, “I don’t know
+what will happen and don’t want to know, and can’t, but if I want
+this—want glory, want to be known to men, want to be loved by them, it
+is not my fault that I want it and want nothing but that and live only
+for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never tell anyone, but, oh God!
+what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men’s esteem? Death,
+wounds, the loss of family—I fear nothing. And precious and dear
+as many persons are to me—father, sister, wife—those dearest to
+me—yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would give them all at
+once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of love from men I
+don’t know and never shall know, for the love of these men here,” he
+thought, as he listened to voices in Kutúzov’s courtyard. The voices
+were those of the orderlies who were packing up; one voice, probably a
+coachman’s, was teasing Kutúzov’s old cook whom Prince Andrew knew,
+and who was called Tit. He was saying, “Tit, I say, Tit!”
+
+“Well?” returned the old man.
+
+“Go, Tit, thresh a bit!” said the wag.
+
+“Oh, go to the devil!” called out a voice, drowned by the laughter
+of the orderlies and servants.
+
+“All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I
+value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in this
+mist!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+That same night, Rostóv was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front
+of Bagratión’s detachment. His hussars were placed along the line
+in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master the
+sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with our
+army’s campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind him;
+in front of him was misty darkness. Rostóv could see nothing, peer as
+he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray, now there
+was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer where the enemy
+ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in his own eyes. His
+eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared—now the Emperor, now
+Denísov, and now Moscow memories—and he again hurriedly opened his
+eyes and saw close before him the head and ears of the horse he was
+riding, and sometimes, when he came within six paces of them, the
+black figures of hussars, but in the distance was still the same misty
+darkness. “Why not?... It might easily happen,” thought Rostóv,
+“that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as he would to any
+other officer; he’ll say: ‘Go and find out what’s there.’ There
+are many stories of his getting to know an officer in just such a chance
+way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave me a place near him?
+Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him the truth, how I would
+unmask his deceivers!” And in order to realize vividly his love
+devotion to the sovereign, Rostóv pictured to himself an enemy or a
+deceitful German, whom he would not only kill with pleasure but whom
+he would slap in the face before the Emperor. Suddenly a distant shout
+aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.
+
+“Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and
+watchword—shaft, Olmütz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in
+reserve tomorrow,” he thought. “I’ll ask leave to go to the front,
+this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won’t be long
+now before I am off duty. I’ll take another turn and when I get back
+I’ll go to the general and ask him.” He readjusted himself in the
+saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars. It
+seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a sloping
+descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as steep as a
+wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostóv could not at
+all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the moon, or some
+unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought something moved on
+that white spot. “I expect it’s snow... that spot... a spot—une
+tache,” he thought. “There now... it’s not a tache... Natásha...
+sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won’t she be surprised when
+I tell her how I’ve seen the Emperor?) Natásha... take my
+sabretache...”—“Keep to the right, your honor, there are bushes
+here,” came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostóv was riding in
+the act of falling asleep. Rostóv lifted his head that had sunk almost
+to his horse’s mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was succumbing
+to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. “But what was I
+thinking? I mustn’t forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor? No,
+that’s not it—that’s tomorrow. Oh yes! Natásha... sabretache...
+saber them... Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches. Along
+the Tverskáya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought about
+him too, just opposite Gúryev’s house... Old Gúryev.... Oh, but
+Denísov’s a fine fellow. But that’s all nonsense. The chief thing
+is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to say
+something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But that’s
+nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important thing I
+was thinking of. Yes, Na-tásha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! That’s
+right!” And his head once more sank to his horse’s neck. All at once
+it seemed to him that he was being fired at. “What? What? What?... Cut
+them down! What?...” said Rostóv, waking up. At the moment he opened
+his eyes he heard in front of him, where the enemy was, the long-drawn
+shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and the horse of the hussar
+near him pricked their ears at these shouts. Over there, where the
+shouting came from, a fire flared up and went out again, then another,
+and all along the French line on the hill fires flared up and the
+shouting grew louder and louder. Rostóv could hear the sound of French
+words but could not distinguish them. The din of many voices was too
+great; all he could hear was: “ahahah!” and “rrrr!”
+
+“What’s that? What do you make of it?” said Rostóv to the hussar
+beside him. “That must be the enemy’s camp!”
+
+The hussar did not reply.
+
+“Why, don’t you hear it?” Rostóv asked again, after waiting for a
+reply.
+
+“Who can tell, your honor?” replied the hussar reluctantly.
+
+“From the direction, it must be the enemy,” repeated Rostóv.
+
+“It may be he or it may be nothing,” muttered the hussar. “It’s
+dark... Steady!” he cried to his fidgeting horse.
+
+Rostóv’s horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,
+pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting
+grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army
+of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and
+farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostóv no longer
+wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy army had a
+stimulating effect on him. “Vive l’Empereur! l’Empereur!” he now
+heard distinctly.
+
+“They can’t be far off, probably just beyond the stream,” he said
+to the hussar beside him.
+
+The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The sound
+of horse’s hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars was
+heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of hussars
+suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.
+
+“Your honor, the generals!” said the sergeant, riding up to Rostóv.
+
+Rostóv, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode with
+the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the line.
+One was on a white horse. Prince Bagratión and Prince Dolgorúkov with
+their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the
+lights and shouts in the enemy’s camp. Rostóv rode up to Bagratión,
+reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the
+generals were saying.
+
+“Believe me,” said Prince Dolgorúkov, addressing Bagratión, “it
+is nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to
+kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us.”
+
+“Hardly,” said Bagratión. “I saw them this evening on that
+knoll; if they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....
+Officer!” said Bagratión to Rostóv, “are the enemy’s skirmishers
+still there?”
+
+“They were there this evening, but now I don’t know, your
+excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?” replied
+Rostóv.
+
+Bagratión stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostóv’s face
+in the mist.
+
+“Well, go and see,” he said, after a pause.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Rostóv spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fédchenko and two other
+hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the direction
+from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and pleased to be
+riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and dangerous misty
+distance where no one had been before him. Bagratión called to him from
+the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostóv pretended not to hear
+him and did not stop but rode on and on, continually mistaking bushes
+for trees and gullies for men and continually discovering his mistakes.
+Having descended the hill at a trot, he no longer saw either our own or
+the enemy’s fires, but heard the shouting of the French more loudly
+and distinctly. In the valley he saw before him something like a river,
+but when he reached it he found it was a road. Having come out onto
+the road he reined in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or
+cross it and ride over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the
+road which gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it
+would be easier to see people coming along it. “Follow me!” said he,
+crossed the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the
+point where the French pickets had been standing that evening.
+
+“Your honor, there he is!” cried one of the hussars behind him. And
+before Rostóv had time to make out what the black thing was that had
+suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a report,
+and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive sound passed
+out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in the pan.
+Rostóv turned his horse and galloped back. Four more reports followed
+at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the fog singing in
+different tones. Rostóv reined in his horse, whose spirits had risen,
+like his own, at the firing, and went back at a footpace. “Well, some
+more! Some more!” a merry voice was saying in his soul. But no more
+shots came.
+
+Only when approaching Bagratión did Rostóv let his horse gallop again,
+and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.
+
+Dolgorúkov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had
+only lit fires to deceive us.
+
+“What does that prove?” he was saying as Rostóv rode up. “They
+might retreat and leave the pickets.”
+
+“It’s plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince,” said
+Bagratión. “Wait till tomorrow morning, we’ll find out everything
+tomorrow.”
+
+“The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was
+in the evening,” reported Rostóv, stooping forward with his hand at
+the salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his
+ride and especially by the sound of the bullets.
+
+“Very good, very good,” said Bagratión. “Thank you, officer.”
+
+“Your excellency,” said Rostóv, “may I ask a favor?”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached
+to the first squadron?”
+
+“What’s your name?”
+
+“Count Rostóv.”
+
+“Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me.”
+
+“Count Ilyá Rostóv’s son?” asked Dolgorúkov.
+
+But Rostóv did not reply.
+
+“Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?”
+
+“I will give the order.”
+
+“Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the
+Emperor,” thought Rostóv.
+
+“Thank God!”
+
+The fires and shouting in the enemy’s army were occasioned by the fact
+that while Napoleon’s proclamation was being read to the troops the
+Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing him,
+lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, “Vive l’Empereur!”
+Napoleon’s proclamation was as follows:
+
+Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the
+Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at
+Hollabrünn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position we
+occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round me on
+the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will myself direct
+your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with your habitual
+valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy’s ranks, but should
+victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see your Emperor
+exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for there must be no
+doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is at stake is the
+honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the honor of our nation.
+
+Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let every
+man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these hirelings
+of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This victory will
+conclude our campaign and we can return to winter quarters, where fresh
+French troops who are being raised in France will join us, and the peace
+I shall conclude will be worthy of my people, of you, and of myself.
+
+NAPOLEON
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the
+center, the reserves, and Bagratión’s right flank had not yet moved,
+but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
+which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French
+right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to plan,
+were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into which they
+were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes smart. It was cold
+and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and breakfasting, the
+soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to
+warm themselves, gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the
+remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they
+did not want or could not carry away with them. Austrian column guides
+were moving in and out among the Russian troops and served as heralds
+of the advance. As soon as an Austrian officer showed himself near
+a commanding officer’s quarters, the regiment began to move: the
+soldiers ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into their boots, their
+bags into the carts, got their muskets ready, and formed rank. The
+officers buttoned up their coats, buckled on their swords and pouches,
+and moved along the ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies
+harnessed and packed the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and
+battalion and regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave
+final instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men
+who remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet
+resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and unable,
+from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see
+either the place they were leaving or that to which they were going.
+
+A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his regiment as
+much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has walked, whatever
+strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is
+always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so
+the soldier always has around him the same comrades, the same ranks, the
+same sergeant major Iván Mítrich, the same company dog Jack, and the
+same commanders. The sailor rarely cares to know the latitude in which
+his ship is sailing, but on the day of battle—heaven knows how and
+whence—a stern note of which all are conscious sounds in the moral
+atmosphere of an army, announcing the approach of something decisive
+and solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of
+battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their
+regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning
+what is going on around them.
+
+The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they could
+not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and level
+ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might
+encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns advanced
+for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and ascending hills,
+avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and unknown ground, and
+nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary, the soldiers became
+aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, other Russian columns
+were moving in the same direction. Every soldier felt glad to know that
+to the unknown place where he was going, many more of our men were going
+too.
+
+“There now, the Kúrskies have also gone past,” was being said in
+the ranks.
+
+“It’s wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last
+night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A regular
+Moscow!”
+
+Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or talked to
+the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war, were out of
+humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not exert themselves
+to cheer the men but merely carried out the orders), yet the troops
+marched gaily, as they always do when going into action, especially to
+an attack. But when they had marched for about an hour in the dense fog,
+the greater part of the men had to halt and an unpleasant consciousness
+of some dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks. How such
+a consciousness is communicated is very difficult to define, but it
+certainly is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly,
+and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been
+alone without any allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before
+this consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as
+it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the stupid
+Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had been
+occasioned by the sausage eaters.
+
+“Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
+against the French?”
+
+“No, one can’t hear them. They’d be firing if we had.”
+
+“They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in
+the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It’s all those damned
+Germans’ muddling! What stupid devils!”
+
+“Yes, I’d send them on in front, but no fear, they’re crowding up
+behind. And now here we stand hungry.”
+
+“I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking the
+way,” said an officer.
+
+“Ah, those damned Germans! They don’t know their own country!”
+said another.
+
+“What division are you?” shouted an adjutant, riding up.
+
+“The Eighteenth.”
+
+“Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you
+won’t get there till evening.”
+
+“What stupid orders! They don’t themselves know what they are
+doing!” said the officer and rode off.
+
+Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.
+
+“Tafa-lafa! But what he’s jabbering no one can make out,” said a
+soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. “I’d shoot them,
+the scoundrels!”
+
+“We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven’t got
+halfway. Fine orders!” was being repeated on different sides.
+
+And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to
+turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the
+Germans.
+
+The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was
+moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center
+was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all
+ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in
+front of the infantry, who had to wait.
+
+At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a
+Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry should be
+halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher command, was to
+blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited. After
+an hour’s delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The fog
+that was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where they
+were descending. In front in the fog a shot was heard and then another,
+at first irregularly at varying intervals—trata...tat—and then more
+and more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach Stream
+began.
+
+Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
+stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
+commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading through
+the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front or around
+them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the enemy
+lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders from
+the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in those unknown
+surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this way the action
+began for the first, second, and third columns, which had gone down into
+the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutúzov was, stood on the
+Pratzen Heights.
+
+Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; on the
+higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was
+going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed,
+six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea of mist, no one
+knew till after eight o’clock.
+
+It was nine o’clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea
+down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon
+stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was
+a clear blue sky, and the sun’s vast orb quivered like a huge hollow,
+crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. The whole French
+army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff, were not on the far side
+of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we
+intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were on this
+side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could
+distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak
+which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab
+horse a little in front of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills
+which seemed to rise out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian
+troops were moving in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of
+firing in the valley. Not a single muscle of his face—which in those
+days was still thin—moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on
+one spot. His predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian
+force had already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes
+and part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack
+and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that in
+a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
+columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one
+direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into
+the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from the
+sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the night,
+by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all
+indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far away
+in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted
+the center of the Russian army, and that that center was already
+sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still he did not
+begin the engagement.
+
+Today was a great day for him—the anniversary of his coronation.
+Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and
+in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field
+in that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything
+succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above
+the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident,
+self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily
+in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his
+attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun floating
+up out of the mist.
+
+When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and mist were
+aglow with dazzling light—as if he had only awaited this to begin the
+action—he drew the glove from his shapely white hand, made a sign
+with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to begin. The marshals,
+accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in different directions, and
+a few minutes later the chief forces of the French army moved rapidly
+toward those Pratzen Heights which were being more and more denuded by
+Russian troops moving down the valley to their left.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+At eight o’clock Kutúzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth
+column, Milorádovich’s, the one that was to take the place of
+Przebyszéwski’s and Langeron’s columns which had already gone down
+into the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and gave
+them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to lead
+that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen he
+halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number forming the
+commander in chief’s suite. He was in a state of suppressed excitement
+and irritation, though controlledly calm as a man is at the approach of
+a long-awaited moment. He was firmly convinced that this was the day of
+his Toulon, or his bridge of Arcola. How it would come about he did not
+know, but he felt sure it would do so. The locality and the position of
+our troops were known to him as far as they could be known to anyone
+in our army. His own strategic plan, which obviously could not now
+be carried out, was forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother’s plan,
+Prince Andrew considered possible contingencies and formed new projects
+such as might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.
+
+To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen forces
+could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight would
+concentrate. “There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,”
+thought he, “I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there,
+standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of
+me.”
+
+He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.
+Seeing them he kept thinking, “That may be the very standard with
+which I shall lead the army.”
+
+In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights was
+a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay like a
+milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left into which
+our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of firing.
+Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the vast orb
+of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that sea of mist,
+some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there the enemy probably
+was, for something could be descried. On the right the Guards were
+entering the misty region with a sound of hoofs and wheels and now and
+then a gleam of bayonets; to the left beyond the village similar masses
+of cavalry came up and disappeared in the sea of mist. In front and
+behind moved infantry. The commander in chief was standing at the end of
+the village letting the troops pass by him. That morning Kutúzov seemed
+worn and irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt
+without any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in
+front.
+
+“Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the
+village!” he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. “Don’t
+you understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not
+defile through narrow village streets when we are marching against the
+enemy?”
+
+“I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,”
+answered the general.
+
+Kutúzov laughed bitterly.
+
+“You’ll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy!
+Very fine!”
+
+“The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the
+dispositions...”
+
+“The dispositions!” exclaimed Kutúzov bitterly. “Who told you
+that?... Kindly do as you are ordered.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” Nesvítski whispered to Prince Andrew, “the old
+man is as surly as a dog.”
+
+An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his hat
+galloped up to Kutúzov and asked in the Emperor’s name had the fourth
+column advanced into action.
+
+Kutúzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to fall
+upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutúzov’s
+malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that what
+was being done was not his adjutant’s fault, and still not answering
+the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkónski.
+
+“Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed the
+village. Tell it to stop and await my orders.”
+
+Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.
+
+“And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted,” he added. “What
+are they doing? What are they doing?” he murmured to himself, still
+not replying to the Austrian.
+
+Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.
+
+Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped
+the third division and convinced himself that there really were no
+sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of the
+regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief’s order to throw
+out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were other troops
+in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six miles away.
+There was really nothing to be seen in front except a barren descent
+hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the commander in chief’s
+name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew galloped back. Kutúzov
+still in the same place, his stout body resting heavily in the saddle
+with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily with closed eyes. The
+troops were no longer moving, but stood with the butts of their muskets
+on the ground.
+
+“All right, all right!” he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a
+general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all
+the left-flank columns had already descended.
+
+“Plenty of time, your excellency,” muttered Kutúzov in the midst of
+a yawn. “Plenty of time,” he repeated.
+
+Just then at a distance behind Kutúzov was heard the sound of regiments
+saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole extended
+line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person they were
+greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the regiment in front
+of which Kutúzov was standing began to shout, he rode a little to one
+side and looked round with a frown. Along the road from Pratzen galloped
+what looked like a squadron of horsemen in various uniforms. Two of them
+rode side by side in front, at full gallop. One in a black uniform with
+white plumes in his hat rode a bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who
+was in a white uniform rode a black one. These were the two Emperors
+followed by their suites. Kutúzov, affecting the manners of an old
+soldier at the front, gave the command “Attention!” and rode up
+to the Emperors with a salute. His whole appearance and manner were
+suddenly transformed. He put on the air of a subordinate who obeys
+without reasoning. With an affectation of respect which evidently struck
+Alexander unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.
+
+This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy face
+of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and vanished.
+After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than on the field
+of Olmütz where Bolkónski had seen him for the first time abroad, but
+there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty and mildness
+in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the same capacity for
+varying expression and the same prevalent appearance of goodhearted
+innocent youth.
+
+At the Olmütz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed
+brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping two
+miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked round
+at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own. Czartorýski,
+Novosíltsev, Prince Volkónsky, Strógonov, and the others, all richly
+dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh, only slightly
+heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had stopped behind the
+Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced young man, sat very
+erect on his handsome black horse, looking about him in a leisurely and
+preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his white adjutants and asked
+some question—“Most likely he is asking at what o’clock they
+started,” thought Prince Andrew, watching his old acquaintance with
+a smile he could not repress as he recalled his reception at Brünn.
+In the Emperors’ suite were the picked young orderly officers of the
+Guard and line regiments, Russian and Austrian. Among them were grooms
+leading the Tsar’s beautiful relay horses covered with embroidered
+cloths.
+
+As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields enters
+a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and confidence of
+success reached Kutúzov’s cheerless staff with the galloping advent
+of all these brilliant young men.
+
+“Why aren’t you beginning, Michael Ilariónovich?” said the
+Emperor Alexander hurriedly to Kutúzov, glancing courteously at the
+same time at the Emperor Francis.
+
+“I am waiting, Your Majesty,” answered Kutúzov, bending forward
+respectfully.
+
+The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had not
+quite heard.
+
+“Waiting, Your Majesty,” repeated Kutúzov. (Prince Andrew noted
+that Kutúzov’s upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the
+word “waiting.”) “Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your
+Majesty.”
+
+The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his
+rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosíltsev who was near him, as
+if complaining of Kutúzov.
+
+“You know, Michael Ilariónovich, we are not on the Empress’ Field
+where a parade does not begin till all the troops are assembled,” said
+the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor Francis, as if inviting
+him if not to join in at least to listen to what he was saying. But the
+Emperor Francis continued to look about him and did not listen.
+
+“That is just why I do not begin, sire,” said Kutúzov in a
+resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not being
+heard, and again something in his face twitched—“That is just why
+I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade and not on the
+Empress’ Field,” said he clearly and distinctly.
+
+In the Emperor’s suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed
+dissatisfaction and reproach. “Old though he may be, he should not, he
+certainly should not, speak like that,” their glances seemed to say.
+
+The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutúzov’s eye
+waiting to hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutúzov, with
+respectfully bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence lasted
+for about a minute.
+
+“However, if you command it, Your Majesty,” said Kutúzov, lifting
+his head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning, but
+submissive general.
+
+He touched his horse and having called Milorádovich, the commander of
+the column, gave him the order to advance.
+
+The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Nóvgorod and
+one of the Ápsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.
+
+As this Ápsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Milorádovich,
+without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous
+tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners front
+and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing salute reined
+in his horse before the Emperor.
+
+“God be with you, general!” said the Emperor.
+
+“Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilité,
+sire,” * he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among
+the gentlemen of the Tsar’s suite by his poor French.
+
+     * “Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to
+     do, Sire.”
+
+
+Milorádovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a little
+behind the Emperor. The Ápsheron men, excited by the Tsar’s presence,
+passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk
+pace.
+
+“Lads!” shouted Milorádovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery
+voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect of
+battle, and by the sight of the gallant Ápsherons, his comrades in
+Suvórov’s time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors, that he
+forgot the sovereigns’ presence. “Lads, it’s not the first village
+you’ve had to take,” cried he.
+
+“Glad to do our best!” shouted the soldiers.
+
+The Emperor’s horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had
+carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the
+field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot and
+pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the
+Empress’ Field, not understanding the significance of the firing, nor
+of the nearness of the Emperor Francis’ black cob, nor of all that was
+being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.
+
+The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a
+remark to him, pointing to the gallant Ápsherons.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Kutúzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind the
+carabineers.
+
+When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column he
+stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been an
+inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops were
+marching along both.
+
+The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly visible
+about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down below, on
+the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutúzov had stopped and was
+speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who was a little behind
+looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask him for a field glass.
+
+“Look, look!” said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the
+distance, but down the hill before him. “It’s the French!”
+
+The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass, trying
+to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their faces
+suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to be a
+mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared just in
+front of us.
+
+“It’s the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But
+how is that?” said different voices.
+
+With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not more
+than five hundred paces from where Kutúzov was standing, a dense French
+column coming up to meet the Ápsherons.
+
+“Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,”
+thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutúzov.
+
+“The Ápsherons must be stopped, your excellency,” cried he. But at
+that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was heard
+quite close at hand, and a voice of naïve terror barely two steps from
+Prince Andrew shouted, “Brothers! All’s lost!” And at this as if
+at a command, everyone began to run.
+
+Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where five
+minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would it
+have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible not to
+be carried back with it oneself. Bolkónski only tried not to lose
+touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp what was
+happening in front of him. Nesvítski with an angry face, red and unlike
+himself, was shouting to Kutúzov that if he did not ride away at once
+he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutúzov remained in the same
+place and without answering drew out a handkerchief. Blood was flowing
+from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced his way to him.
+
+“You are wounded?” he asked, hardly able to master the trembling of
+his lower jaw.
+
+“The wound is not here, it is there!” said Kutúzov, pressing the
+handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing soldiers.
+“Stop them!” he shouted, and at the same moment, probably realizing
+that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the
+right.
+
+A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.
+
+The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by
+them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, “Get on!
+Why are you hindering us?” Another in the same place turned round and
+fired in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutúzov himself rode.
+Having by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of men,
+Kutúzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward a
+sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the crowd
+of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutúzov, saw on the
+slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was still firing
+and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some Russian infantry,
+neither moving forward to protect the battery nor backward with the
+fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself from the infantry and
+approached Kutúzov. Of Kutúzov’s suite only four remained. They were
+all pale and exchanged looks in silence.
+
+“Stop those wretches!” gasped Kutúzov to the regimental commander,
+pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to punish
+him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment and across
+Kutúzov’s suite like a flock of little birds.
+
+The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutúzov, were firing
+at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his leg;
+several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding the
+flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on the
+muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing without
+orders.
+
+“Oh! Oh! Oh!” groaned Kutúzov despairingly and looked around....
+“Bolkónski!” he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness
+of the feebleness of age, “Bolkónski!” he whispered, pointing to
+the disordered battalion and at the enemy, “what’s that?”
+
+But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of
+shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and run to
+the standard.
+
+“Forward, lads!” he shouted in a voice piercing as a child’s.
+
+“Here it is!” thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and
+hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him.
+Several soldiers fell.
+
+“Hurrah!” shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up
+the heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole
+battalion would follow him.
+
+And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then
+another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting “Hurrah!”
+and overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag
+that was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew’s hands, but he
+was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,
+dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw our
+artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having abandoned
+their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French infantry
+soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning the guns
+round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within twenty paces
+of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above him unceasingly and
+to right and left of him soldiers continually groaned and dropped. But
+he did not look at them: he looked only at what was going on in front
+of him—at the battery. He now saw clearly the figure of a red-haired
+gunner with his shako knocked awry, pulling one end of a mop while
+a French soldier tugged at the other. He could distinctly see the
+distraught yet angry expression on the faces of these two men, who
+evidently did not realize what they were doing.
+
+“What are they about?” thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them.
+“Why doesn’t the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed?
+Why doesn’t the Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the
+Frenchman remembers his bayonet and stabs him....”
+
+And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to
+the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had
+triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited him,
+was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it ended. It
+seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him on the head
+with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but the worst of
+it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his seeing what he had
+been looking at.
+
+“What’s this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way,” thought he,
+and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle
+of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner
+had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or
+saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the
+sky—the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray
+clouds gliding slowly across it. “How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not
+at all as I ran,” thought Prince Andrew—“not as we ran, shouting
+and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened
+and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds
+glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that
+lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All
+is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing,
+nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but
+quiet and peace. Thank God!...”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+On our right flank commanded by Bagratión, at nine o’clock the battle
+had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorúkov’s demand to
+commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility from himself,
+Prince Bagratión proposed to Dolgorúkov to send to inquire of the
+commander in chief. Bagratión knew that as the distance between the two
+flanks was more than six miles, even if the messenger were not killed
+(which he very likely would be), and found the commander in chief
+(which would be very difficult), he would not be able to get back before
+evening.
+
+Bagratión cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his suite,
+and the boyish face of Rostóv, breathless with excitement and hope, was
+the first to catch his eye. He sent him.
+
+“And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in
+chief, your excellency?” said Rostóv, with his hand to his cap.
+
+“You can give the message to His Majesty,” said Dolgorúkov,
+hurriedly interrupting Bagratión.
+
+On being relieved from picket duty Rostóv had managed to get a few
+hours’ sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute,
+with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and generally in
+that state of mind which makes everything seem possible, pleasant, and
+easy.
+
+All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be a
+general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he was
+orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going with a
+message to Kutúzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself. The morning
+was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart was full of
+joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his horse the rein
+and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the line of
+Bagratión’s troops, which had not yet advanced into action but were
+standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by Uvárov’s
+cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation for battle;
+having passed Uvárov’s cavalry he clearly heard the sound of cannon
+and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder and louder.
+
+In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket shots
+at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two cannon shots,
+but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the hill before
+Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon that sometimes
+several of them were not separated from one another but merged into a
+general roar.
+
+He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one another
+down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling, spreading,
+and mingling with one another. He could also, by the gleam of bayonets
+visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of infantry and narrow
+lines of artillery with green caissons.
+
+Rostóv stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was
+going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand
+or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men of
+some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of troops;
+but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make out.
+These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating effect on him;
+on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and determination.
+
+“Go on! Go on! Give it them!” he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,
+and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther and
+farther into the region where the army was already in action.
+
+“How it will be there I don’t know, but all will be well!” thought
+Rostóv.
+
+After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part of the
+line (the Guards) was already in action.
+
+“So much the better! I shall see it close,” he thought.
+
+He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
+galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered
+ranks were returning from the attack. Rostóv got out of their way,
+involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.
+
+“That is no business of mine,” he thought. He had not ridden many
+hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
+width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
+uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
+across his path. Rostóv put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
+way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at the
+same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of the
+horses were already galloping. Rostóv heard the thud of their hoofs
+and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their figures, and
+even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our Horse Guards,
+advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming to meet them.
+
+The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their horses.
+Rostóv could already see their faces and heard the command:
+“Charge!” shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to
+full speed. Rostóv, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack on
+the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, but
+still was not in time to avoid them.
+
+The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned angrily
+on seeing Rostóv before him, with whom he would inevitably collide.
+This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostóv and his Bedouin over
+(Rostóv felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic men
+and horses) had it not occurred to Rostóv to flourish his whip before
+the eyes of the Guardsman’s horse. The heavy black horse, sixteen
+hands high, shied, throwing back its ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman
+drove his huge spurs in violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail
+and extending its neck, galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse
+Guards passed Rostóv before he heard them shout, “Hurrah!” and
+looking back saw that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some
+foreign cavalry with red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing
+more, for immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and
+smoke enveloped everything.
+
+At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, disappeared in
+the smoke, Rostóv hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go where
+he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that
+amazed the French themselves. Rostóv was horrified to hear later that
+of all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those brilliant,
+rich youths, officers and cadets, who had galloped past him on their
+thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left after the charge.
+
+“Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall see
+the Emperor immediately!” thought Rostóv and galloped on.
+
+When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them and
+around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so
+much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on
+the soldiers’ faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
+officers.
+
+Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he heard a
+voice calling him by name.
+
+“Rostóv!”
+
+“What?” he answered, not recognizing Borís.
+
+“I say, we’ve been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!” said
+Borís with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been
+under fire for the first time.
+
+Rostóv stopped.
+
+“Have you?” he said. “Well, how did it go?”
+
+“We drove them back!” said Borís with animation, growing talkative.
+“Can you imagine it?” and he began describing how the Guards, having
+taken up their position and seeing troops before them, thought they were
+Austrians, and all at once discovered from the cannon balls discharged
+by those troops that they were themselves in the front line and had
+unexpectedly to go into action. Rostóv without hearing Borís to the
+end spurred his horse.
+
+“Where are you off to?” asked Borís.
+
+“With a message to His Majesty.”
+
+“There he is!” said Borís, thinking Rostóv had said “His
+Highness,” and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high shoulders
+and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in his helmet
+and Horse Guards’ jacket, shouting something to a pale, white
+uniformed Austrian officer.
+
+“But that’s the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
+Emperor,” said Rostóv, and was about to spur his horse.
+
+“Count! Count!” shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager
+as Borís. “Count! I am wounded in my right hand” (and he showed his
+bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) “and I remained at
+the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family—the
+von Bergs—have been knights!”
+
+He said something more, but Rostóv did not wait to hear it and rode
+away.
+
+Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostóv, to avoid
+again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the Horse
+Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round the place
+where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. Suddenly he
+heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind our troops,
+where he could never have expected the enemy to be.
+
+“What can it be?” he thought. “The enemy in the rear of our army?
+Impossible!” And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
+and for the issue of the whole battle. “But be that what it may,”
+he reflected, “there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
+commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish with
+the rest.”
+
+The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostóv was more and
+more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the village of
+Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.
+
+“What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is
+firing?” Rostóv kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian
+soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.
+
+“The devil knows! They’ve killed everybody! It’s all up now!”
+he was told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
+understood what was happening as little as he did.
+
+“Kill the Germans!” shouted one.
+
+“May the devil take them—the traitors!”
+
+“Zum Henker diese Russen!” * muttered a German.
+
+    * “Hang these Russians!”
+
+
+Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse, screams,
+and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing died down.
+Rostóv learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing
+at one another.
+
+“My God! What does it all mean?” thought he. “And here, where at
+any moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a
+handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can’t be that, it
+can’t be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!”
+
+The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostóv’s head. Though
+he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights just where
+he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief, he could not,
+did not wish to, believe that.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Rostóv had been ordered to look for Kutúzov and the Emperor near the
+village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
+were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
+urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
+the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
+which he had come out was thronged with calèches, carriages of all
+sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
+some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
+dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
+stationed on the Pratzen Heights.
+
+“Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutúzov?” Rostóv kept asking
+everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
+
+At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.
+
+“Eh, brother! They’ve all bolted long ago!” said the soldier,
+laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.
+
+Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostóv stopped the
+horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
+question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
+carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
+that he was dangerously wounded.
+
+“It can’t be!” said Rostóv. “It must have been someone else.”
+
+“I saw him myself,” replied the man with a self-confident smile of
+derision. “I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I’ve
+seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in
+the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black horses
+fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It’s time I knew the Imperial
+horses and Ilyá Iványch. I don’t think Ilyá drives anyone except
+the Tsar!”
+
+Rostóv let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded
+officer passing by addressed him:
+
+“Who is it you want?” he asked. “The commander in chief? He was
+killed by a cannon ball—struck in the breast before our regiment.”
+
+“Not killed—wounded!” another officer corrected him.
+
+“Who? Kutúzov?” asked Rostóv.
+
+“Not Kutúzov, but what’s his name—well, never mind... there are
+not many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders
+are there,” said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,
+and he walked on.
+
+Rostóv rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
+going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to
+doubt it now. Rostóv rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which
+he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say
+to the Tsar or to Kutúzov, even if they were alive and unwounded?
+
+“Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!” a
+soldier shouted to him. “They’d kill you there!”
+
+“Oh, what are you talking about?” said another. “Where is he to
+go? That way is nearer.”
+
+Rostóv considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
+would be killed.
+
+“It’s all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to
+save myself?” he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest
+number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not
+yet occupied that region, and the Russians—the uninjured and slightly
+wounded—had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of
+manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded
+to each couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes
+and one could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes
+feigned—or so it seemed to Rostóv. He put his horse to a trot to
+avoid seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid—afraid not
+for his life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not
+stand the sight of these unfortunates.
+
+The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
+wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant
+riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots. The
+sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around
+him merged in Rostóv’s mind into a single feeling of terror and pity
+for himself. He remembered his mother’s last letter. “What would she
+feel,” thought he, “if she saw me here now on this field with the
+cannon aimed at me?”
+
+In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
+the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
+disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire
+sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle
+was lost. No one whom Rostóv asked could tell him where the Emperor
+or Kutúzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was wounded was
+correct, others that it was not, and explained the false rumor that had
+spread by the fact that the Emperor’s carriage had really galloped
+from the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal
+Count Tolstóy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in
+the Emperor’s suite. One officer told Rostóv that he had seen someone
+from headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither Rostóv
+rode, not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When
+he had ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian
+troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men
+on horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed
+familiar to Rostóv; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which
+Rostóv fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his
+horse with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only
+a little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse’s hind hoofs.
+Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially
+addressed the horseman with the white plumes, evidently suggesting
+that he should do the same. The rider, whose figure seemed familiar
+to Rostóv and involuntarily riveted his attention, made a gesture of
+refusal with his head and hand and by that gesture Rostóv instantly
+recognized his lamented and adored monarch.
+
+“But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!”
+thought Rostóv. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostóv
+saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The
+Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm,
+the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostóv was happy
+in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded were
+false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and even
+ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorúkov had ordered
+him to deliver.
+
+But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the
+thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a
+chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is
+alone with her, so Rostóv, now that he had attained what he had longed
+for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach
+the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be
+inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.
+
+“What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of
+his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or
+painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him
+now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight
+of him?” Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor
+that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. Those
+speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for the
+most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, generally
+when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic
+deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.
+
+“Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right
+flank now that it is nearly four o’clock and the battle is lost?
+No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
+reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
+look or bad opinion from him,” Rostóv decided; and sorrowfully and
+with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at the
+Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.
+
+While Rostóv was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
+Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
+Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
+to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
+unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
+Rostóv from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
+long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
+covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll’s hand.
+
+“And I might have been in his place!” thought Rostóv, and hardly
+restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
+despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.
+
+His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was
+the cause of his grief.
+
+He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign. It
+was a unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had not
+made use of it.... “What have I done?” thought he. And he turned
+round and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but
+there was no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages
+were passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that Kutúzov’s
+staff were not far off, in the village the vehicles were going to.
+Rostóv followed them. In front of him walked Kutúzov’s groom leading
+horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,
+bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.
+
+“Tit! I say, Tit!” said the groom.
+
+“What?” answered the old man absent-mindedly.
+
+“Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!”
+
+“Oh, you fool!” said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed
+in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
+
+
+Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More
+than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.
+
+Przebyszéwski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns
+after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused
+masses.
+
+The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhtúrov’s mingled forces were
+crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of
+Augesd.
+
+After five o’clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade
+(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous
+batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our
+retreating forces.
+
+In the rearguard, Dokhtúrov and others rallying some battalions kept up
+a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It
+was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the
+old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully
+angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the
+floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on that dam over which for
+so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully
+driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty
+with flour whitening their carts—on that narrow dam amid the wagons
+and the cannon, under the horses’ hoofs and between the wagon wheels,
+men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one
+another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to
+move on a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way.
+
+Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, or
+a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
+splashing with blood those near them.
+
+Dólokhov—now an officer—wounded in the arm, and on foot, with
+the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
+represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the
+crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in
+on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had fallen under a
+cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone
+behind them, another fell in front and splashed Dólokhov with blood.
+The crowd, pushing forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few
+steps, and again stopped.
+
+“Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here
+another two minutes and it is certain death,” thought each one.
+
+Dólokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the edge
+of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto the
+slippery ice that covered the millpool.
+
+“Turn this way!” he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked
+under him; “turn this way!” he shouted to those with the gun. “It
+bears!...”
+
+The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
+would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon even
+under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to the
+bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at the
+entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to address
+Dólokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd that
+everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general fell
+from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or thought of
+raising him.
+
+“Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don’t you hear? Go
+on!” innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck
+the general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
+shouting.
+
+One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto the
+ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen pond.
+The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped
+into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to his waist.
+The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped his horse, but
+from behind still came the shouts: “Onto the ice, why do you stop? Go
+on! Go on!” And cries of horror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers
+near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them turn and
+move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had held under
+those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty men who were on
+it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning one another.
+
+Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop onto the
+ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd that covered
+the dam, the pond, and the bank.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his
+hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkónski bleeding profusely and unconsciously
+uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.
+
+Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not know
+how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt that he was
+alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.
+
+“Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw
+today?” was his first thought. “And I did not know this suffering
+either,” he thought. “Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all
+till now. But where am I?”
+
+He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices
+speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same lofty
+sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, and
+between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did not
+see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had ridden up
+and stopped near him.
+
+It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding
+over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the batteries
+firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and wounded left
+on the field.
+
+“Fine men!” remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier,
+who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened nape, lay on his
+stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.
+
+“The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your
+Majesty,” said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were
+firing at Augesd.
+
+“Have some brought from the reserve,” said Napoleon, and having gone
+on a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back with
+the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had already
+been taken by the French as a trophy.)
+
+“That’s a fine death!” said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkónski.
+
+Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was
+Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he
+heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only
+did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at once
+forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to death,
+and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He knew it
+was Napoleon—his hero—but at that moment Napoleon seemed to him
+such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was passing now
+between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over
+it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over
+him, or what was said of him; he was only glad that people were standing
+near him and only wished that they would help him and bring him back to
+life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to
+understand it so differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and
+utter a sound. He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan
+which aroused his own pity.
+
+“Ah! He is alive,” said Napoleon. “Lift this young man up and
+carry him to the dressing station.”
+
+Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who, hat in
+hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the victory.
+
+Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from the
+terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting while
+being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing station.
+He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when with other
+wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the hospital.
+During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was able to look
+about him and even speak.
+
+The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a French
+convoy officer, who said rapidly: “We must halt here: the Emperor
+will pass here immediately; it will please him to see these gentlemen
+prisoners.”
+
+“There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army,
+that he is probably tired of them,” said another officer.
+
+“All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
+Alexander’s Guards,” said the first one, indicating a Russian
+officer in the white uniform of the Horse Guards.
+
+Bolkónski recognized Prince Repnín whom he had met in Petersburg
+society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of
+the Horse Guards.
+
+Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.
+
+“Which is the senior?” he asked, on seeing the prisoners.
+
+They named the colonel, Prince Repnín.
+
+“You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander’s regiment of Horse
+Guards?” asked Napoleon.
+
+“I commanded a squadron,” replied Repnín.
+
+“Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably,” said Napoleon.
+
+“The praise of a great commander is a soldier’s highest reward,”
+said Repnín.
+
+“I bestow it with pleasure,” said Napoleon. “And who is that young
+man beside you?”
+
+Prince Repnín named Lieutenant Sukhtélen.
+
+After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
+
+“He’s very young to come to meddle with us.”
+
+“Youth is no hindrance to courage,” muttered Sukhtélen in a failing
+voice.
+
+“A splendid reply!” said Napoleon. “Young man, you will go far!”
+
+Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the Emperor’s
+eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his
+attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield
+and, addressing him, again used the epithet “young man” that was
+connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.
+
+“Well, and you, young man,” said he. “How do you feel, mon
+brave?”
+
+Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few
+words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed
+straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that moment
+seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his
+hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear,
+compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he had seen and
+understood, that he could not answer him.
+
+Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the
+stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,
+suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
+Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of
+greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and
+the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one
+alive could understand or explain.
+
+The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to one of
+the officers as he went: “Have these gentlemen attended to and taken
+to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their wounds. Au revoir,
+Prince Repnín!” and he spurred his horse and galloped away.
+
+His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.
+
+The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the
+little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother’s neck, but
+seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now hastened to
+return the holy image.
+
+Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the
+little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his chest
+outside his uniform.
+
+“It would be good,” thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon his
+sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, “it
+would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to
+Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this life,
+and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I
+should be if I could now say: ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’... But to
+whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible,
+which I not only cannot address but which I cannot even express in
+words—the Great All or Nothing-” said he to himself, “or to
+that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing
+certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I
+understand, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but
+all-important.”
+
+The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable pain;
+his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his father,
+wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt the night
+before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little Napoleon, and
+above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief subjects of his delirious
+fancies.
+
+The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented
+itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that
+little Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of
+shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and torments
+had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward morning
+all these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness of
+unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon’s doctor,
+Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in convalescence.
+
+“He is a nervous, bilious subject,” said Larrey, “and will not
+recover.”
+
+And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care of
+the inhabitants of the district.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FOUR: 1806
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostóv returned home on leave. Denísov
+was going home to Vorónezh and Rostóv persuaded him to travel with him
+as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a comrade at
+the last post station but one before Moscow, Denísov had drunk three
+bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts across the
+snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to Moscow, but lay
+at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostóv, who grew more and more
+impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.
+
+“How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,
+shops, bakers’ signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!” thought
+Rostóv, when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and
+they had entered Moscow.
+
+“Denísov! We’re here! He’s asleep,” he added, leaning forward
+with his whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed
+of the sleigh.
+
+Denísov gave no answer.
+
+“There’s the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhár,
+has his stand, and there’s Zakhár himself and still the same horse!
+And here’s the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can’t
+you hurry up? Now then!”
+
+“Which house is it?” asked the driver.
+
+“Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don’t you see?
+That’s our house,” said Rostóv. “Of course, it’s our house!
+Denísov, Denísov! We’re almost there!”
+
+Denísov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.
+
+“Dmítri,” said Rostóv to his valet on the box, “those lights are
+in our house, aren’t they?”
+
+“Yes, sir, and there’s a light in your father’s study.”
+
+“Then they’ve not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now,
+don’t forget to put out my new coat,” added Rostóv, fingering his
+new mustache. “Now then, get on,” he shouted to the driver. “Do
+wake up, Váska!” he went on, turning to Denísov, whose head
+was again nodding. “Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for
+vodka—get on!” Rostóv shouted, when the sleigh was only three
+houses from his door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at
+all. At last the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and
+Rostóv saw overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster
+broken off, the porch, and the post by the side of the pavement. He
+sprang out before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house
+stood cold and silent, as if quite regardless of who had come to it.
+There was no one in the hall. “Oh God! Is everyone all right?”
+he thought, stopping for a moment with a sinking heart, and then
+immediately starting to run along the hall and up the warped steps of
+the familiar staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always
+angered the countess when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely
+as ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the anteroom.
+
+Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokófy, the footman, who was
+so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat
+plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the opening
+door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly changed to one
+of delighted amazement.
+
+“Gracious heavens! The young count!” he cried, recognizing his
+young master. “Can it be? My treasure!” and Prokófy, trembling with
+excitement, rushed toward the drawing room door, probably in order to
+announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss the
+young man’s shoulder.
+
+“All well?” asked Rostóv, drawing away his arm.
+
+“Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They’ve just finished supper. Let me have
+a look at you, your excellency.”
+
+“Is everything quite all right?”
+
+“The Lord be thanked, yes!”
+
+Rostóv, who had completely forgotten Denísov, not wishing anyone to
+forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the
+large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card
+tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had
+already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the drawing
+room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and began
+hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the same
+kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more kissing,
+more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish which was
+Papa, which Natásha, and which Pétya. Everyone shouted, talked, and
+kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not there, he noticed
+that.
+
+“And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!...”
+
+“Here he is... our own... Kólya, * dear fellow... How he has
+changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!...”
+
+    * Nicholas.
+
+“And me, kiss me!”
+
+“Dearest... and me!”
+
+Sónya, Natásha, Pétya, Anna Mikháylovna, Véra, and the old count
+were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the
+room, exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.
+
+Pétya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, “And me too!”
+
+Natásha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his face
+with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang away and
+pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked piercingly.
+
+All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all around
+were lips seeking a kiss.
+
+Sónya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,
+looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she
+longed. Sónya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at
+this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not taking
+her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave her a
+grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for someone. The old
+countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard at the door, steps
+so rapid that they could hardly be his mother’s.
+
+Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made since
+he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her. When they
+met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her face, but
+only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar’s jacket. Denísov,
+who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there and wiped
+his eyes at the sight.
+
+“Vasíli Denísov, your son’s friend,” he said, introducing
+himself to the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.
+
+“You are most welcome! I know, I know,” said the count, kissing and
+embracing Denísov. “Nicholas wrote us... Natásha, Véra, look! Here
+is Denísov!”
+
+The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of Denísov.
+
+“Darling Denísov!” screamed Natásha, beside herself with rapture,
+springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
+escapade made everybody feel confused. Denísov blushed too, but smiled
+and, taking Natásha’s hand, kissed it.
+
+Denísov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostóvs all
+gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.
+
+The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every
+moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every
+movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully adoring
+eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places nearest
+to him and disputed with one another who should bring him his tea,
+handkerchief, and pipe.
+
+Rostóv was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first
+moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed
+insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.
+
+Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers slept
+till ten o’clock.
+
+In the room next to their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,
+satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly
+cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The servants
+were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving, and their
+well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell of tobacco.
+
+“Hallo, Gwíska—my pipe!” came Vasíli Denísov’s husky voice.
+“Wostóv, get up!”
+
+Rostóv, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his
+disheveled head from the hot pillow.
+
+“Why, is it late?”
+
+“Late! It’s nearly ten o’clock,” answered Natásha’s voice.
+A rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of
+girls’ voices came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a
+crack and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black hair,
+and merry faces. It was Natásha, Sónya, and Pétya, who had come to
+see whether they were getting up.
+
+“Nicholas! Get up!” Natásha’s voice was again heard at the door.
+
+“Directly!”
+
+Meanwhile, Pétya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer room,
+with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder brother, and
+forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see men undressed,
+opened the bedroom door.
+
+“Is this your saber?” he shouted.
+
+The girls sprang aside. Denísov hid his hairy legs under the blanket,
+looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door, having let
+Pétya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from behind it.
+
+“Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!” said Natásha’s voice.
+
+“Is this your saber?” asked Pétya. “Or is it yours?” he said,
+addressing the black-mustached Denísov with servile deference.
+
+Rostóv hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing gown,
+and went out. Natásha had put on one spurred boot and was just getting
+her foot into the other. Sónya, when he came in, was twirling round and
+was about to expand her dresses into a balloon and sit down. They were
+dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and were both fresh, rosy, and
+bright. Sónya ran away, but Natásha, taking her brother’s arm, led
+him into the sitting room, where they began talking. They hardly gave
+one another time to ask questions and give replies concerning a thousand
+little matters which could not interest anyone but themselves. Natásha
+laughed at every word he said or that she said herself, not because what
+they were saying was amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable
+to control her joy which expressed itself by laughter.
+
+“Oh, how nice, how splendid!” she said to everything.
+
+Rostóv felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that
+childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he left
+home now for the first time after eighteen months again brightened his
+soul and his face.
+
+“No, but listen,” she said, “now you are quite a man, aren’t
+you? I’m awfully glad you’re my brother.” She touched his
+mustache. “I want to know what you men are like. Are you the same as
+we? No?”
+
+“Why did Sónya run away?” asked Rostóv.
+
+“Ah, yes! That’s a whole long story! How are you going to speak to
+her—thou or you?”
+
+“As may happen,” said Rostóv.
+
+“No, call her you, please! I’ll tell you all about it some other
+time. No, I’ll tell you now. You know Sónya’s my dearest friend.
+Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!”
+
+She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her long,
+slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is covered
+even by a ball dress.
+
+“I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in the
+fire and pressed it there!”
+
+Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what used
+to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natásha’s wildly bright
+eyes, Rostóv re-entered that world of home and childhood which had no
+meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best joys of his life;
+and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of love did not seem
+to him senseless, he understood and was not surprised at it.
+
+“Well, and is that all?” he asked.
+
+“We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
+nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does it
+for life, but I don’t understand that, I forget quickly.”
+
+“Well, what then?”
+
+“Well, she loves me and you like that.”
+
+Natásha suddenly flushed.
+
+“Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are to
+forget all that.... She says: ‘I shall love him always, but let him be
+free.’ Isn’t that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn’t it?”
+asked Natásha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what
+she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.
+
+Rostóv became thoughtful.
+
+“I never go back on my word,” he said. “Besides, Sónya is so
+charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness.”
+
+“No, no!” cried Natásha, “she and I have already talked it over.
+We knew you’d say so. But it won’t do, because you see, if you say
+that—if you consider yourself bound by your promise—it will seem as
+if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were marrying
+her because you must, and that wouldn’t do at all.”
+
+Rostóv saw that it had been well considered by them. Sónya had already
+struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when he had caught
+a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She was a charming girl
+of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with him (he did not doubt
+that for an instant). Why should he not love her now, and even marry
+her, Rostóv thought, but just now there were so many other pleasures
+and interests before him! “Yes, they have taken a wise decision,” he
+thought, “I must remain free.”
+
+“Well then, that’s excellent,” said he. “We’ll talk it over
+later on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!”
+
+“Well, and are you still true to Borís?” he continued.
+
+“Oh, what nonsense!” cried Natásha, laughing. “I don’t think
+about him or anyone else, and I don’t want anything of the kind.”
+
+“Dear me! Then what are you up to now?”
+
+“Now?” repeated Natásha, and a happy smile lit up her face. “Have
+you seen Duport?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Not seen Duport—the famous dancer? Well then, you won’t
+understand. That’s what I’m up to.”
+
+Curving her arms, Natásha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran back
+a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
+together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.
+
+“See, I’m standing! See!” she said, but could not maintain herself
+on her toes any longer. “So that’s what I’m up to! I’ll never
+marry anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don’t tell anyone.”
+
+Rostóv laughed so loud and merrily that Denísov, in his bedroom, felt
+envious and Natásha could not help joining in.
+
+“No, but don’t you think it’s nice?” she kept repeating.
+
+“Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Borís?”
+
+Natásha flared up. “I don’t want to marry anyone. And I’ll tell
+him so when I see him!”
+
+“Dear me!” said Rostóv.
+
+“But that’s all rubbish,” Natásha chattered on. “And is
+Denísov nice?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, indeed!”
+
+“Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,
+Denísov?”
+
+“Why terrible?” asked Nicholas. “No, Váska is a splendid
+fellow.”
+
+“You call him Váska? That’s funny! And is he very nice?”
+
+“Very.”
+
+“Well then, be quick. We’ll all have breakfast together.”
+
+And Natásha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
+dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
+Rostóv met Sónya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know
+how to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
+meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not
+be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was
+looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave
+with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as
+you—Sónya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender
+kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by
+Natásha’s intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then
+thanked him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his
+freedom and told her that one way or another he would never cease to
+love her, for that would be impossible.
+
+“How strange it is,” said Véra, selecting a moment when all were
+silent, “that Sónya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet
+like strangers.”
+
+Véra’s remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like
+most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not
+only Sónya, Nicholas, and Natásha, but even the old countess,
+who—dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making
+a brilliant match—blushed like a girl.
+
+Denísov, to Rostóv’s surprise, appeared in the drawing room with
+pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as
+he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the
+ladies and gentlemen than Rostóv had ever expected to see him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostóv was welcomed
+by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling
+Nikólenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and polite young
+man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good
+dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.
+
+The Rostóvs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
+that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
+acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
+latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
+latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
+passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself
+to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be
+at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
+despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from
+Gavríl to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sónya on the sly—he now
+recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.
+Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
+wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
+action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected racing
+men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one
+of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka
+at the Arkhárovs’ ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal
+Kámenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a
+colonel of forty to whom Denísov had introduced him.
+
+His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But still, as
+he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke
+about him and about his love for him, letting it be understood that he
+had not told all and that there was something in his feelings for the
+Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole soul he shared
+the adoration then common in Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of
+as the “angel incarnate.”
+
+During Rostóv’s short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he
+did not draw closer to Sónya, but rather drifted away from her. She was
+very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was
+at the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no
+time for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and
+prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he
+thought of Sónya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself,
+“Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom
+I do not yet know. There will be time enough to think about love when I
+want to, but now I have no time.” Besides, it seemed to him that the
+society of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went to balls
+and into ladies’ society with an affectation of doing so against his
+will. The races, the English Club, sprees with Denísov, and visits to
+a certain house—that was another matter and quite the thing for a
+dashing young hussar!
+
+At the beginning of March, old Count Ilyá Rostóv was very busy
+arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagratión at the English Club.
+
+The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
+orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktíst, the club’s
+head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and
+fish for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee
+of the club from the day it was founded. To him the club entrusted the
+arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagratión, for few men knew
+so well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale,
+and still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
+their own resources what might be needed for the success of the fete.
+The club cook and the steward listened to the count’s orders with
+pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they
+so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing
+several thousand rubles.
+
+“Well then, mind and have cocks’ comb in the turtle soup, you
+know!”
+
+“Shall we have three cold dishes then?” asked the cook.
+
+The count considered.
+
+“We can’t have less—yes, three... the mayonnaise, that’s one,”
+said he, bending down a finger.
+
+“Then am I to order those large sterlets?” asked the steward.
+
+“Yes, it can’t be helped if they won’t take less. Ah, dear me! I
+was forgetting. We must have another entrée. Ah, goodness gracious!”
+he clutched at his head. “Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmítri!
+Eh, Dmítri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate,” he said to the factotum
+who appeared at his call. “Hurry off and tell Maksím, the gardener,
+to set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must
+be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred pots
+here on Friday.”
+
+Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his “little
+countess” to have a rest, but remembering something else of
+importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club
+steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the
+clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count, handsome,
+rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by
+his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.
+
+“Ah, my boy, my head’s in a whirl!” said the old man with a smile,
+as if he felt a little confused before his son. “Now, if you would
+only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own orchestra,
+but shouldn’t we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like
+that sort of thing.”
+
+“Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagratión worried himself less before
+the battle of Schön Grabern than you do now,” said his son with a
+smile.
+
+The old count pretended to be angry.
+
+“Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!”
+
+And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful
+expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and
+son.
+
+“What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktíst?” said
+he. “Laughing at us old fellows!”
+
+“That’s so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
+dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that’s not their
+business!”
+
+“That’s it, that’s it!” exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing
+his son by both hands, he cried, “Now I’ve got you, so take the
+sleigh and pair at once, and go to Bezúkhov’s, and tell him ‘Count
+Ilyá has sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.’ We
+can’t get them from anyone else. He’s not there himself, so you’ll
+have to go in and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the
+Rasgulyáy—the coachman Ipátka knows—and look up the gypsy
+Ilyúshka, the one who danced at Count Orlóv’s, you remember, in a
+white Cossack coat, and bring him along to me.”
+
+“And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?” asked Nicholas,
+laughing. “Dear, dear!...”
+
+At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,
+preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna
+Mikháylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count in his
+dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her to
+excuse his costume.
+
+“No matter at all, my dear count,” she said, meekly closing her
+eyes. “But I’ll go to Bezúkhov’s myself. Pierre has arrived, and
+now we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him
+in any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Borís. Thank God, Borís
+is now on the staff.”
+
+The count was delighted at Anna Mikháylovna’s taking upon herself one
+of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.
+
+“Tell Bezúkhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Is his wife with
+him?” he asked.
+
+Anna Mikháylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted
+on her face.
+
+“Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate,” she said. “If what
+we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing
+when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul
+as young Bezúkhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to give
+him what consolation I can.”
+
+“Wh-what is the matter?” asked both the young and old Rostóv.
+
+Anna Mikháylovna sighed deeply.
+
+“Dólokhov, Mary Ivánovna’s son,” she said in a mysterious
+whisper, “has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him
+up, invited him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here
+and that daredevil after her!” said Anna Mikháylovna, wishing to show
+her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile
+betraying her sympathy for the “daredevil,” as she called Dólokhov.
+“They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune.”
+
+“Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the club—it will all blow
+over. It will be a tremendous banquet.”
+
+Next day, the third of March, soon after one o’clock, two hundred and
+fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting the
+guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagratión, to
+dinner.
+
+On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow had
+been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to victories
+that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not believe it,
+while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so strange an
+event. In the English Club, where all who were distinguished, important,
+and well informed foregathered when the news began to arrive in
+December, nothing was said about the war and the last battle, as
+though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who set the tone
+in conversation—Count Rostopchín, Prince Yúri Dolgorúkov, Valúev,
+Count Markóv, and Prince Vyázemski—did not show themselves at the
+club, but met in private houses in intimate circles, and the
+Moscovites who took their opinions from others—Ilyá Rostóv among
+them—remained for a while without any definite opinion on the subject
+of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that something was
+wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult, and so it was best
+to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room,
+the bigwigs who guided the club’s opinion reappeared, and everybody
+began speaking clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the
+incredible, unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat,
+everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things
+began to be said. These reasons were the treachery of the Austrians, a
+defective commissariat, the treachery of the Pole Przebyszéwski and of
+the Frenchman Langeron, Kutúzov’s incapacity, and (it was whispered)
+the youth and inexperience of the sovereign, who had trusted worthless
+and insignificant people. But the army, the Russian army, everyone
+declared, was extraordinary and had achieved miracles of valor. The
+soldiers, officers, and generals were heroes. But the hero of heroes was
+Prince Bagratión, distinguished by his Schön Grabern affair and by
+the retreat from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column
+unbroken and had all day beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous
+as his own. What also conduced to Bagratión’s being selected as
+Moscow’s hero was the fact that he had no connections in the city
+and was a stranger there. In his person, honor was shown to a simple
+fighting Russian soldier without connections and intrigues, and to one
+who was associated by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of
+Suvórov. Moreover, paying such honor to Bagratión was the best way of
+expressing disapproval and dislike of Kutúzov.
+
+“Had there been no Bagratión, it would have been necessary to
+invent him,” said the wit Shinshín, parodying the words of Voltaire.
+Kutúzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,
+calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.
+
+All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorúkov’s saying: “If you go on
+modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay,” suggesting
+consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the
+words of Rostopchín, that French soldiers have to be incited to battle
+by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them
+that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian
+soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all sides, new and
+fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of heroism shown by
+our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another
+had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon singlehanded.
+Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know him, as having, when
+wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the left, and gone
+forward. Of Bolkónski, nothing was said, and only those who knew him
+intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife
+with his eccentric father.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were filled
+with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in springtime.
+The members and guests of the club wandered hither and thither, sat,
+stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in evening dress,
+and a few here and there with powdered hair and in Russian kaftáns.
+Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and smart stockings,
+stood at every door anxiously noting visitors’ every movement in order
+to offer their services. Most of those present were elderly, respected
+men with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures
+and voices. This class of guests and members sat in certain habitual
+places and met in certain habitual groups. A minority of those present
+were casual guests—chiefly young men, among whom were Denísov,
+Rostóv, and Dólokhov—who was now again an officer in the Semënov
+regiment. The faces of these young people, especially those who were
+military men, bore that expression of condescending respect for their
+elders which seems to say to the older generation, “We are prepared to
+respect and honor you, but all the same remember that the future belongs
+to us.”
+
+Nesvítski was there as an old member of the club. Pierre, who at his
+wife’s command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles,
+went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. Here,
+as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to
+his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he
+treated them with absent-minded contempt.
+
+By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his wealth
+and connections he belonged to the groups of old and honored guests, and
+so he went from one group to another. Some of the most important old men
+were the center of groups which even strangers approached respectfully
+to hear the voices of well-known men. The largest circles formed round
+Count Rostopchín, Valúev, and Narýshkin. Rostopchín was describing
+how the Russians had been overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to
+force their way through them with bayonets.
+
+Valúev was confidentially telling that Uvárov had been sent from
+Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.
+
+In the third circle, Narýshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
+Austrian Council of War at which Suvórov crowed like a cock in reply to
+the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshín, standing close
+by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutúzov had evidently failed to
+learn from Suvórov even so simple a thing as the art of crowing like a
+cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the wit, making him
+feel that in that place and on that day, it was improper to speak so of
+Kutúzov.
+
+Count Ilyá Rostóv, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft
+boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the
+important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all
+equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up
+young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostóv
+stood at a window with Dólokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately
+made and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed
+Dólokhov’s hand.
+
+“Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been together
+out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasíli Ignátovich...
+How d’ye do, old fellow?” he said, turning to an old man who was
+passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a general
+stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a frightened face:
+“He’s arrived!”
+
+Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and—like rye shaken together
+in a shovel—the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms
+came together and crowded in the large drawing room by the door of the
+ballroom.
+
+Bagratión appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or sword,
+which, in accord with the club custom, he had given up to the hall
+porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip
+over his shoulder, as when Rostóv had seen him on the eve of the battle
+of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign
+Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast. Evidently just
+before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and whiskers trimmed,
+which changed his appearance for the worse. There was something naïvely
+festive in his air, which, in conjunction with his firm and virile
+features, gave him a rather comical expression. Bekleshëv and Theodore
+Uvárov, who had arrived with him, paused at the doorway to allow him,
+as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagratión was embarrassed, not
+wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and this caused some delay
+at the doors, but after all he did at last enter first. He walked shyly
+and awkwardly over the parquet floor of the reception room, not knowing
+what to do with his hands; he was more accustomed to walk over a plowed
+field under fire, as he had done at the head of the Kursk regiment at
+Schön Grabern—and he would have found that easier. The committeemen
+met him at the first door and, expressing their delight at seeing such a
+highly honored guest, took possession of him as it were, without waiting
+for his reply, surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was
+at first impossible to enter the drawing room door for the crowd of
+members and guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look
+at Bagratión over each other’s shoulders, as if he were some rare
+animal. Count Ilyá Rostóv, laughing and repeating the words, “Make
+way, dear boy! Make way, make way!” pushed through the crowd more
+energetically than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and
+seated them on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members
+of the club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilyá, again thrusting his
+way through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a
+minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver
+which he presented to Prince Bagratión. On the salver lay some verses
+composed and printed in the hero’s honor. Bagratión, on seeing the
+salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help. But all eyes
+demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in their power, he
+resolutely took the salver with both hands and looked sternly and
+reproachfully at the count who had presented it to him. Someone
+obligingly took the dish from Bagratión (or he would, it seemed, have
+held it till evening and have gone in to dinner with it) and drew his
+attention to the verses.
+
+“Well, I will read them, then!” Bagratión seemed to say, and,
+fixing his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and
+serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began
+reading them aloud. Bagratión bowed his head and listened:
+
+   Bring glory then to Alexander’s reign
+   And on the throne our Titus shield.
+   A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man,
+   A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field!
+   E’en fortunate Napoleon
+   Knows by experience, now, Bagratión,
+   And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...
+
+But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo announced
+that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the dining room came
+the resounding strains of the polonaise:
+
+   Conquest’s joyful thunder waken,
+   Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...
+
+and Count Rostóv, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading
+his verses, bowed to Bagratión. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner
+was more important than verses, and Bagratión, again preceding all the
+rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between
+two Alexanders—Bekleshëv and Narýshkin—which was a significant
+allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took their
+seats in the dining room, according to their rank and importance: the
+more important nearer to the honored guest, as naturally as water flows
+deepest where the land lies lowest.
+
+Just before dinner, Count Ilyá Rostóv presented his son to Bagratión,
+who recognized him and said a few words to him, disjointed and awkward,
+as were all the words he spoke that day, and Count Ilyá looked joyfully
+and proudly around while Bagratión spoke to his son.
+
+Nicholas Rostóv, with Denísov and his new acquaintance, Dólokhov, sat
+almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre, beside Prince
+Nesvítski. Count Ilyá Rostóv with the other members of the committee
+sat facing Bagratión and, as the very personification of Moscow
+hospitality, did the honors to the prince.
+
+His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and the
+other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till the
+end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions to the
+footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety. Everything
+was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet (at sight of
+which Ilyá Rostóv blushed with self-conscious pleasure), the footmen
+began popping corks and filling the champagne glasses. After the fish,
+which made a certain sensation, the count exchanged glances with
+the other committeemen. “There will be many toasts, it’s time to
+begin,” he whispered, and taking up his glass, he rose. All were
+silent, waiting for what he would say.
+
+“To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!” he cried, and at the
+same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and enthusiasm.
+The band immediately struck up “Conquest’s joyful thunder
+waken...” All rose and cried “Hurrah!” Bagratión also rose and
+shouted “Hurrah!” in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted
+it on the field at Schön Grabern. Young Rostóv’s ecstatic voice
+could be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. “To the
+health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!” he roared, “Hurrah!” and
+emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many followed
+his example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time. When the
+voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass and everybody
+sat down again, smiling at the noise they had made and exchanging
+remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a note lying beside
+his plate, and proposed a toast, “To the health of the hero of our
+last campaign, Prince Peter Ivánovich Bagratión!” and again his blue
+eyes grew moist. “Hurrah!” cried the three hundred voices again,
+but instead of the band a choir began singing a cantata composed by Paul
+Ivánovich Kutúzov:
+
+   Russians! O’er all barriers on!
+   Courage conquest guarantees;
+   Have we not Bagratión?
+   He brings foemen to their knees,... etc.
+
+As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was proposed
+and Count Ilyá Rostóv became more and more moved, more glass was
+smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshëv,
+Narýshkin, Uvárov, Dolgorúkov, Apráksin, Valúev, to the committee,
+to all the club members and to all the club guests, and finally to
+Count Ilyá Rostóv separately, as the organizer of the banquet. At that
+toast, the count took out his handkerchief and, covering his face, wept
+outright.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Pierre sat opposite Dólokhov and Nicholas Rostóv. As usual, he ate and
+drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed that
+some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all through
+dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed eyes and
+a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge of his
+nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and hear
+nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by some
+depressing and unsolved problem.
+
+The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by the
+princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dólokhov’s intimacy with
+his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that morning, which
+in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters said that he saw
+badly through his spectacles, but that his wife’s connection with
+Dólokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre absolutely
+disbelieved both the princess’ hints and the letter, but he feared
+now to look at Dólokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every time
+he chanced to meet Dólokhov’s handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt
+something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly
+away. Involuntarily recalling his wife’s past and her relations with
+Dólokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be
+true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his wife.
+He involuntarily remembered how Dólokhov, who had fully recovered his
+former position after the campaign, had returned to Petersburg and come
+to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations with Pierre as a boon
+companion, Dólokhov had come straight to his house, and Pierre had put
+him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled how Hélène had smilingly
+expressed disapproval of Dólokhov’s living at their house, and how
+cynically Dólokhov had praised his wife’s beauty to him and from that
+time till they came to Moscow had not left them for a day.
+
+“Yes, he is very handsome,” thought Pierre, “and I know him. It
+would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule
+me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended him,
+and helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add to the
+pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it were true,
+but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can’t, believe it.”
+He remembered the expression Dólokhov’s face assumed in his moments
+of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping them
+into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel without any
+reason, or shot a post-boy’s horse with a pistol. That expression
+was often on Dólokhov’s face when looking at him. “Yes, he is a
+bully,” thought Pierre, “to kill a man means nothing to him. It must
+seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that must please him.
+He must think that I, too, am afraid of him—and in fact I am afraid of
+him,” he thought, and again he felt something terrible and monstrous
+rising in his soul. Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv were now sitting
+opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostóv was talking merrily to his
+two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the other a notorious
+duelist and rake, and every now and then he glanced ironically at
+Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-minded, and massive figure was a very
+noticeable one at the dinner. Rostóv looked inimically at Pierre,
+first because Pierre appeared to his hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the
+husband of a beauty, and in a word—an old woman; and secondly because
+Pierre in his preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not recognized
+Rostóv and had not responded to his greeting. When the Emperor’s
+health was drunk, Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his
+glass.
+
+“What are you about?” shouted Rostóv, looking at him in an ecstasy
+of exasperation. “Don’t you hear it’s His Majesty the Emperor’s
+health?”
+
+Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting till
+all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostóv.
+
+“Why, I didn’t recognize you!” he said. But Rostóv was otherwise
+engaged; he was shouting “Hurrah!”
+
+“Why don’t you renew the acquaintance?” said Dólokhov to Rostóv.
+
+“Confound him, he’s a fool!” said Rostóv.
+
+“One should make up to the husbands of pretty women,” said Denísov.
+
+Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were talking
+about him. He reddened and turned away.
+
+“Well, now to the health of handsome women!” said Dólokhov, and
+with a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of
+his mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.
+
+“Here’s to the health of lovely women, Peterkin—and their
+lovers!” he added.
+
+Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking at
+Dólokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing leaflets
+with Kutúzov’s cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of the
+principal guests. He was just going to take it when Dólokhov, leaning
+across, snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre looked
+at Dólokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and monstrous
+that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took possession of him.
+He leaned his whole massive body across the table.
+
+“How dare you take it?” he shouted.
+
+Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvítski and the
+neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezúkhov.
+
+“Don’t! Don’t! What are you about?” whispered their frightened
+voices.
+
+Dólokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that
+smile of his which seemed to say, “Ah! This is what I like!”
+
+“You shan’t have it!” he said distinctly.
+
+Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
+
+“You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!” he ejaculated, and,
+pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.
+
+At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
+that the question of his wife’s guilt which had been tormenting him
+the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative.
+He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denísov’s
+request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostóv agreed to be
+Dólokhov’s second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements for
+the duel with Nesvítski, Bezúkhov’s second. Pierre went home, but
+Rostóv with Dólokhov and Denísov stayed on at the club till late,
+listening to the gypsies and other singers.
+
+“Well then, till tomorrow at Sokólniki,” said Dólokhov, as he took
+leave of Rostóv in the club porch.
+
+“And do you feel quite calm?” Rostóv asked.
+
+Dólokhov paused.
+
+“Well, you see, I’ll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two
+words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
+affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
+killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the firm
+intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as possible, and
+then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostromá used to tell
+me. ‘Everyone fears a bear,’ he says, ‘but when you see one your
+fear’s all gone, and your only thought is not to let him get away!’
+And that’s how it is with me. À demain, mon cher.” *
+
+    * Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
+
+Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvítski drove to the
+Sokólniki forest and found Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv already
+there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations which
+had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face was yellow.
+He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about distractedly and
+screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He was entirely absorbed
+by two considerations: his wife’s guilt, of which after his sleepless
+night he had not the slightest doubt, and the guiltlessness of
+Dólokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor of a man who was
+nothing to him.... “I should perhaps have done the same thing in his
+place,” thought Pierre. “It’s even certain that I should have done
+the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I shall kill him, or
+he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee. Can’t I go away from
+here, run away, bury myself somewhere?” passed through his mind. But
+just at moments when such thoughts occurred to him, he would ask in a
+particularly calm and absent-minded way, which inspired the respect of
+the onlookers, “Will it be long? Are things ready?”
+
+When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the barriers,
+and the pistols loaded, Nesvítski went up to Pierre.
+
+“I should not be doing my duty, Count,” he said in timid tones,
+“and should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done
+me in choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very
+grave, moment I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no
+sufficient ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it....
+You were not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous...”
+
+“Oh yes, it is horribly stupid,” said Pierre.
+
+“Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your opponent
+will accept them,” said Nesvítski (who like the others concerned in
+the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not yet believe that
+the affair had come to an actual duel). “You know, Count, it is much
+more honorable to admit one’s mistake than to let matters become
+irreparable. There was no insult on either side. Allow me to
+convey....”
+
+“No! What is there to talk about?” said Pierre. “It’s all the
+same.... Is everything ready?” he added. “Only tell me where to go
+and where to shoot,” he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.
+
+He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of the
+trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand—a fact that he
+did not wish to confess.
+
+“Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot,” said he.
+
+“No apologies, none whatever,” said Dólokhov to Denísov (who on
+his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to
+the appointed place.
+
+The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,
+where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine forest
+covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up during the
+last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at the farther
+edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, left tracks in
+the deep wet snow between the place where they had been standing and
+Nesvítski’s and Dólokhov’s sabers, which were stuck into the
+ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and misty; at
+forty paces’ distance nothing could be seen. For three minutes all had
+been ready, but they still delayed and all were silent.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+“Well, begin!” said Dólokhov.
+
+“All right,” said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling
+of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly begun
+could no longer be averted but was taking its course independently of
+men’s will.
+
+Denísov first went to the barrier and announced: “As the
+adve’sawies have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your
+pistols, and at the word thwee begin to advance.
+
+“O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!” he shouted angrily and stepped aside.
+
+The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and nearer to
+one another, beginning to see one another through the mist. They had the
+right to fire when they liked as they approached the barrier. Dólokhov
+walked slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently with his
+bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist’s face. His mouth wore
+its usual semblance of a smile.
+
+“So I can fire when I like!” said Pierre, and at the word
+“three,” he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and
+stepping into the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at
+arm’s length, apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left
+hand he held carefully back, because he wished to support his right
+hand with it and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and
+strayed off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet,
+then quickly glanced at Dólokhov and, bending his finger as he had been
+shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered
+at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The
+smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him from seeing anything
+for an instant, but there was no second report as he had expected. He
+only heard Dólokhov’s hurried steps, and his figure came in view
+through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his left side, while
+the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face was pale. Rostóv ran
+toward him and said something.
+
+“No-o-o!” muttered Dólokhov through his teeth, “no, it’s not
+over.” And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the
+saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he wiped
+it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning face was
+pallid and quivered.
+
+“Plea...” began Dólokhov, but could not at first pronounce the
+word.
+
+“Please,” he uttered with an effort.
+
+Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dólokhov and
+was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dólokhov cried:
+
+“To your barrier!” and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by
+his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dólokhov lowered his head to
+the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself,
+drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked
+and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes, still
+smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as he mustered his
+remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.
+
+“Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!” ejaculated Nesvítski.
+
+“Cover yourself!” even Denísov cried to his adversary.
+
+Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
+helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
+Dólokhov and looked sorrowfully at him. Denísov, Rostóv, and
+Nesvítski closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report
+and Dólokhov’s angry cry.
+
+“Missed!” shouted Dólokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards
+on the snow.
+
+Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
+trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:
+
+“Folly... folly! Death... lies...” he repeated, puckering his face.
+
+Nesvítski stopped him and took him home.
+
+Rostóv and Denísov drove away with the wounded Dólokhov.
+
+The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not answer
+a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering Moscow he
+suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort, took Rostóv, who
+was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostóv was struck by the
+totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on
+Dólokhov’s face.
+
+“Well? How do you feel?” he asked.
+
+“Bad! But it’s not that, my friend—” said Dólokhov with a
+gasping voice. “Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don’t matter,
+but I have killed her, killed... She won’t get over it! She won’t
+survive....”
+
+“Who?” asked Rostóv.
+
+“My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother,” and
+Dólokhov pressed Rostóv’s hand and burst into tears.
+
+When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostóv that he was
+living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive it.
+He implored Rostóv to go on and prepare her.
+
+Rostóv went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
+learned that Dólokhov the brawler, Dólokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
+with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate
+of sons and brothers.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and in
+Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after the
+duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his
+father’s room, that huge room in which Count Bezúkhov had died.
+
+He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that
+had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
+thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not fall
+asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace the
+room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early days of
+their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, passionate look on
+her face, and then immediately he saw beside her Dólokhov’s handsome,
+insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen it at the banquet, and
+then that same face pale, quivering, and suffering, as it had been when
+he reeled and sank on the snow.
+
+“What has happened?” he asked himself. “I have killed her lover,
+yes, killed my wife’s lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come
+to do it?”—“Because you married her,” answered an inner voice.
+
+“But in what was I to blame?” he asked. “In marrying her without
+loving her; in deceiving yourself and her.” And he vividly recalled
+that moment after supper at Prince Vasíli’s, when he spoke those
+words he had found so difficult to utter: “I love you.” “It all
+comes from that! Even then I felt it,” he thought. “I felt then that
+it was not so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out.”
+
+He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
+Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection of
+how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into his
+study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his head
+steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and at
+his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing respectful
+understanding of his employer’s happiness.
+
+“But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic beauty
+and social tact,” thought he; “been proud of my house, in which she
+received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and beauty. So
+this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did not understand
+her. How often when considering her character I have told myself that
+I was to blame for not understanding her, for not understanding that
+constant composure and complacency and lack of all interests or desires,
+and the whole secret lies in the terrible truth that she is a depraved
+woman. Now I have spoken that terrible word to myself all has become
+clear.
+
+“Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss her
+naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself be
+kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she replied
+with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous: ‘Let
+him do what he pleases,’ she used to say of me. One day I asked her if
+she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously and said
+she was not a fool to want to have children, and that she was not going
+to have any children by me.”
+
+Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the
+vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had
+been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.
+
+“I’m not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous
+promener,” * she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with
+young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not
+love her.
+
+    * “You clear out of this.”
+
+
+“Yes, I never loved her,” said he to himself; “I knew she was a
+depraved woman,” he repeated, “but dared not admit it to myself.
+And now there’s Dólokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and
+perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!”
+
+Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of what
+is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their troubles. He
+digested his sufferings alone.
+
+“It is all, all her fault,” he said to himself; “but what of that?
+Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say ‘Je vous aime’ * to her,
+which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must endure...
+what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that’s
+nonsense,” he thought. “The slur on my name and honor—that’s all
+apart from myself.”
+
+    * I love you.
+
+“Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a
+criminal,” came into Pierre’s head, “and from their point of
+view they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a
+martyr’s death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being
+a despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are
+alive—live: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have died an hour ago.
+And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life
+in comparison with eternity?”
+
+But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such reflections,
+she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments when he had
+most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he felt the
+blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move about and break
+and tear whatever came to his hand. “Why did I tell her that ‘Je
+vous aime’?” he kept repeating to himself. And when he had said it
+for the tenth time, Molière’s words: “Mais que diable allait-il
+faire dans cette galère?” * occurred to him, and he began to laugh at
+himself.
+
+      * “But what the devil was he doing in that galley?”
+
+
+In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to
+Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He
+resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his
+intention to part from her forever.
+
+Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee, Pierre
+was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.
+
+He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled expression,
+unable to realize where he was.
+
+“The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at
+home,” said the valet.
+
+But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the countess
+herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver and with
+simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round her lovely head like
+a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there was
+a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent marble brow. With her
+imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in front of the valet.
+She knew of the duel and had come to speak about it. She waited till the
+valet had set down the coffee things and left the room. Pierre looked
+at her timidly over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded by hounds
+who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless before her
+enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless
+and impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down
+but looked at him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to
+go.
+
+“Well, what’s this now? What have you been up to now, I should like
+to know?” she asked sternly.
+
+“I? What have I...?” stammered Pierre.
+
+“So it seems you’re a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel about?
+What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you.”
+
+Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, but
+could not reply.
+
+“If you won’t answer, I’ll tell you...” Hélène went on. “You
+believe everything you’re told. You were told...” Hélène laughed,
+“that Dólokhov was my lover,” she said in French with her coarse
+plainness of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other
+word, “and you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this
+duel prove? That you’re a fool, que vous êtes un sot, but everybody
+knew that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of
+all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing what
+you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without cause.”
+Hélène raised her voice and became more and more excited, “A man
+who’s a better man than you in every way...”
+
+“Hm... Hm...!” growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her, and
+not moving a muscle.
+
+“And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like
+his company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should prefer
+yours.”
+
+“Don’t speak to me... I beg you,” muttered Pierre hoarsely.
+
+“Why shouldn’t I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you
+plainly that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who
+would not have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so,”
+said she.
+
+Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose strange
+expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He was suffering
+physically at that moment, there was a weight on his chest and he could
+not breathe. He knew that he must do something to put an end to this
+suffering, but what he wanted to do was too terrible.
+
+“We had better separate,” he muttered in a broken voice.
+
+“Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune,” said
+Hélène. “Separate! That’s a thing to frighten me with!”
+
+Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.
+
+“I’ll kill you!” he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table
+with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her
+brandishing the slab.
+
+Hélène’s face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His
+father’s nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and
+delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping
+down on her with outstretched hands shouted, “Get out!” in such a
+terrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows what
+he would have done at that moment had Hélène not fled from the room.
+
+
+A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his estates
+in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property, and left
+for Petersburg alone.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz and
+the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite of the
+letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his body had
+not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What was worst of
+all for his relations was the fact that there was still a possibility of
+his having been picked up on the battlefield by the people of the
+place and that he might now be lying, recovering or dying, alone among
+strangers and unable to send news of himself. The gazettes from which
+the old prince first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz stated, as usual
+very briefly and vaguely, that after brilliant engagements the Russians
+had had to retreat and had made their withdrawal in perfect order. The
+old prince understood from this official report that our army had been
+defeated. A week after the gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz
+came a letter from Kutúzov informing the prince of the fate that had
+befallen his son.
+
+“Your son,” wrote Kutúzov, “fell before my eyes, a standard in
+his hand and at the head of a regiment—he fell as a hero, worthy of
+his father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the
+whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort
+myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise
+he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the field of
+battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce.”
+
+After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone in his
+study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next morning, but he
+was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the architect, and though
+he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.
+
+When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at his
+lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.
+
+“Ah, Princess Mary!” he said suddenly in an unnatural voice,
+throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own
+impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that
+wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.)
+
+She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her. Her
+eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father’s face, not sad, not
+crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging over
+her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the worst
+in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and
+incomprehensible—the death of one she loved.
+
+“Father! Andrew!”—said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such
+an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her father
+could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.
+
+“Bad news! He’s not among the prisoners nor among the killed!
+Kutúzov writes...” and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to
+drive the princess away by that scream... “Killed!”
+
+The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but on
+hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in her
+beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy—a supreme joy apart from the
+joys and sorrows of this world—overflowed the great grief within her.
+She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took his hand, and
+drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy neck.
+
+“Father,” she said, “do not turn away from me, let us weep
+together.”
+
+“Scoundrels! Blackguards!” shrieked the old man, turning his face
+away from her. “Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why? Go,
+go and tell Lise.”
+
+The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father and
+wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he took
+leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw him tender
+and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. “Did he believe?
+Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There in the realms
+of eternal peace and blessedness?” she thought.
+
+“Father, tell me how it happened,” she asked through her tears.
+
+“Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and
+Russia’s glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell
+Lise. I will follow.”
+
+When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
+working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy calm
+peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did not see
+Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at something
+joyful and mysterious taking place within her.
+
+“Mary,” she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying
+back, “give me your hand.” She took her sister-in-law’s hand and
+held it below her waist.
+
+Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained
+lifted in childlike happiness.
+
+Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of her
+sister-in-law’s dress.
+
+“There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know,
+Mary, I am going to love him very much,” said Lise, looking with
+bright and happy eyes at her sister-in-law.
+
+Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.
+
+“What is the matter, Mary?”
+
+“Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew,” she said, wiping
+away her tears on her sister-in-law’s knee.
+
+Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began trying to
+prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry. Unobservant as
+was the little princess, these tears, the cause of which she did not
+understand, agitated her. She said nothing but looked about uneasily as
+if in search of something. Before dinner the old prince, of whom she was
+always afraid, came into her room with a peculiarly restless and malign
+expression and went out again without saying a word. She looked at
+Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a while with that expression of
+attention to something within her that is only seen in pregnant women,
+and suddenly began to cry.
+
+“Has anything come from Andrew?” she asked.
+
+“No, you know it’s too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I
+feel afraid.”
+
+“So there’s nothing?”
+
+“Nothing,” answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant
+eyes at her sister-in-law.
+
+She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to hide the
+terrible news from her till after her confinement, which was expected
+within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince each bore and hid
+their grief in their own way. The old prince would not cherish any hope:
+he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had been killed, and though he
+sent an official to Austria to seek for traces of his son, he ordered a
+monument from Moscow which he intended to erect in his own garden to his
+memory, and he told everybody that his son had been killed. He tried not
+to change his former way of life, but his strength failed him. He walked
+less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary
+hoped. She prayed for her brother as living and was always awaiting news
+of his return.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+“Dearest,” said the little princess after breakfast on the morning
+of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit,
+but as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word, and
+even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had come, so
+now the smile of the little princess—influenced by the general mood
+though without knowing its cause—was such as to remind one still more
+of the general sorrow.
+
+“Dearest, I’m afraid this morning’s fruschtique *—as Fóka the
+cook calls it—has disagreed with me.”
+
+    * Frühstück: breakfast.
+
+“What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you
+are very pale!” said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,
+ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.
+
+“Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdánovna be sent for?” said one
+of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdánovna was a midwife from the
+neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)
+
+“Oh yes,” assented Princess Mary, “perhaps that’s it. I’ll go.
+Courage, my angel.” She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.
+
+“Oh, no, no!” And besides the pallor and the physical suffering
+on the little princess’ face, an expression of childish fear of
+inevitable pain showed itself.
+
+“No, it’s only indigestion?... Say it’s only indigestion, say so,
+Mary! Say...” And the little princess began to cry capriciously like
+a suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some
+affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary
+Bogdánovna.
+
+“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!” she heard as she left the room.
+
+The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small, plump
+white hands with an air of calm importance.
+
+“Mary Bogdánovna, I think it’s beginning!” said Princess Mary
+looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.
+
+“Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess,” said Mary Bogdánovna, not
+hastening her steps. “You young ladies should not know anything about
+it.”
+
+“But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?” said the
+princess. (In accordance with Lise’s and Prince Andrew’s wishes they
+had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at
+any moment.)
+
+“No matter, Princess, don’t be alarmed,” said Mary Bogdánovna.
+“We’ll manage very well without a doctor.”
+
+Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy
+being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the
+large leather sofa from Prince Andrew’s study into the bedroom. On
+their faces was a quiet and solemn look.
+
+Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the
+house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and watching
+what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with quiet steps in
+and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away. She did
+not venture to ask any questions, and shut the door again, now sitting
+down in her easy chair, now taking her prayer book, now kneeling before
+the icon stand. To her surprise and distress she found that her prayers
+did not calm her excitement. Suddenly her door opened softly and her old
+nurse, Praskóvya Sávishna, who hardly ever came to that room as the
+old prince had forbidden it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl
+round her head.
+
+“I’ve come to sit with you a bit, Másha,” said the nurse, “and
+here I’ve brought the prince’s wedding candles to light before his
+saint, my angel,” she said with a sigh.
+
+“Oh, nurse, I’m so glad!”
+
+“God is merciful, birdie.”
+
+The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by the door
+with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began reading. Only
+when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one another, the
+princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging. Everyone in the
+house was dominated by the same feeling that Princess Mary experienced
+as she sat in her room. But owing to the superstition that the fewer
+the people who know of it the less a woman in travail suffers, everyone
+tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it, but apart from the
+ordinary staid and respectful good manners habitual in the prince’s
+household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a
+consciousness that something great and mysterious was being accomplished
+at that moment made itself felt.
+
+There was no laughter in the maids’ large hall. In the men servants’
+hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs’
+quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old
+prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent
+Tíkhon to ask Mary Bogdánovna what news.—“Say only that ‘the
+prince told me to ask,’ and come and tell me her answer.”
+
+“Inform the prince that labor has begun,” said Mary Bogdánovna,
+giving the messenger a significant look.
+
+Tíkhon went and told the prince.
+
+“Very good!” said the prince closing the door behind him, and
+Tíkhon did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.
+
+After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and, seeing
+the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his perturbed
+face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed him on the
+shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles or saying why he
+had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world continued its course.
+Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of suspense and softening of
+heart in the presence of the unfathomable did not lessen but increased.
+No one slept.
+
+It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume its
+sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A relay
+of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German doctor from
+Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback with lanterns
+were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the country road with its
+hollows and snow-covered pools of water.
+
+Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her
+luminous eyes fixed on her nurse’s wrinkled face (every line of which
+she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from under the
+kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.
+
+Nurse Sávishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely
+hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds of
+times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess Mary
+in Kishenëv with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a
+midwife.
+
+“God is merciful, doctors are never needed,” she said.
+
+Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the
+window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of the
+prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the larks
+returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the damask
+curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill, snowy draft.
+Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the stocking she was
+knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to catch the open
+casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her kerchief and her loose
+locks of gray hair.
+
+“Princess, my dear, there’s someone driving up the avenue!” she
+said, holding the casement and not closing it. “With lanterns. Most
+likely the doctor.”
+
+“Oh, my God! thank God!” said Princess Mary. “I must go and meet
+him, he does not know Russian.”
+
+Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the newcomer.
+As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the window a carriage
+with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On
+a banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft. On
+the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood looking scared and holding
+another candle. Still lower, beyond the turn of the staircase, one
+could hear the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice that
+seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying something.
+
+“Thank God!” said the voice. “And Father?”
+
+“Gone to bed,” replied the voice of Demyán the house steward, who
+was downstairs.
+
+Then the voice said something more, Demyán replied, and the steps in
+the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more rapidly.
+
+“It’s Andrew!” thought Princess Mary. “No it can’t be, that
+would be too extraordinary,” and at the very moment she thought this,
+the face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of
+which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman
+stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed and
+strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up the
+stairs and embraced his sister.
+
+“You did not get my letter?” he asked, and not waiting for a
+reply—which he would not have received, for the princess was unable to
+speak—he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the
+doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last post
+station), and again embraced his sister.
+
+“What a strange fate, Másha darling!” And having taken off his
+cloak and felt boots, he went to the little princess’ apartment.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on her
+head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair lay round
+her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy mouth with its
+downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew entered
+and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on which she was lying.
+Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear and excitement, rested
+on him without changing their expression. “I love you all and have
+done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!” her look
+seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not realize the significance
+of his appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went round the sofa and
+kissed her forehead.
+
+“My darling!” he said—a word he had never used to her before.
+“God is merciful....”
+
+She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
+
+“I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!”
+said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did
+not realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with
+her sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary
+Bogdánovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.
+
+The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess Mary,
+again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk broke
+off at every moment. They waited and listened.
+
+“Go, dear,” said Princess Mary.
+
+Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room next
+to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and became
+confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with his hands
+and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal moans came
+through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to the door, and tried to
+open it. Someone was holding it shut.
+
+“You can’t come in! You can’t!” said a terrified voice from
+within.
+
+He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more seconds
+went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek—it could not be hers, she
+could not scream like that—came from the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to
+the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.
+
+“What have they taken a baby in there for?” thought Prince Andrew in
+the first second. “A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or
+is the baby born?”
+
+Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; tears
+choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill he began to cry,
+sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves
+tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out
+of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor gave him a
+bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman rushed out and
+seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He went into
+his wife’s room. She was lying dead, in the same position he had seen
+her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor of
+the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face with
+its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.
+
+“I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you
+done to me?”—said her charming, pathetic, dead face.
+
+In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and squealed
+in Mary Bogdánovna’s trembling white hands.
+
+
+Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his father’s
+room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to
+the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise
+round his son’s neck, and without a word he began to sob like a child.
+
+
+Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went
+up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss.
+And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes.
+“Ah, what have you done to me?” it still seemed to say, and Prince
+Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty
+of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep. The
+old man too came up and kissed the waxen little hands that lay quietly
+crossed one on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face seemed
+to say: “Ah, what have you done to me, and why?” And at the sight
+the old man turned angrily away.
+
+
+Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas Andréevich
+was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her chin, while
+the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy’s little red and
+wrinkled soles and palms.
+
+His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of dropping
+him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and handed him over
+to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat in another room,
+faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in the font, and awaited
+the termination of the ceremony. He looked up joyfully at the baby when
+the nurse brought it to him and nodded approval when she told him that
+the wax with the baby’s hair had not sunk in the font but had floated.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Rostóv’s share in Dólokhov’s duel with Bezúkhov was hushed up by
+the efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks
+as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of
+Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of the
+family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties. Dólokhov
+recovered, and Rostóv became very friendly with him during his
+convalescence. Dólokhov lay ill at his mother’s who loved him
+passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivánovna, who had grown fond of
+Rostóv for his friendship to her Fédya, often talked to him about her
+son.
+
+“Yes, Count,” she would say, “he is too noble and pure-souled for
+our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like
+a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it
+honorable, of Bezúkhov? And Fédya, with his noble spirit, loved him
+and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg
+when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn’t they do it
+together? And there! Bezúkhov got off scotfree, while Fédya had to
+bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go through!
+It’s true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail to do that?
+I think there were not many such gallant sons of the fatherland out
+there as he. And now—this duel! Have these people no feeling, or
+honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and shoot so
+straight! It’s well God had mercy on us. And what was it for? Who
+doesn’t have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I see
+things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for months.
+And then to call him out, reckoning on Fédya not fighting because he
+owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you understand
+Fédya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few
+people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly soul!”
+
+Dólokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostóv in a way no
+one would have expected of him.
+
+“I know people consider me a bad man!” he said. “Let them! I
+don’t care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love,
+I love so that I would give my life for them, and the others I’d
+throttle if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother,
+and two or three friends—you among them—and as for the rest I only
+care about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of
+them are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy,” he continued,
+“I have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met
+any women—countesses or cooks—who were not venal. I have not yet met
+that divine purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a
+one I’d give my life for her! But those!...” and he made a gesture
+of contempt. “And believe me, if I still value my life it is
+only because I still hope to meet such a divine creature, who will
+regenerate, purify, and elevate me. But you don’t understand it.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I quite understand,” answered Rostóv, who was under his
+new friend’s influence.
+
+In the autumn the Rostóvs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter
+Denísov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the
+winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostóv spent in Moscow, was one of the
+happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas brought
+many young men to his parents’ house. Véra was a handsome girl
+of twenty; Sónya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening
+flower; Natásha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly
+amusing, now girlishly enchanting.
+
+At that time in the Rostóvs’ house there prevailed an amorous
+atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very
+charming girls. Every young man who came to the house—seeing those
+impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
+happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the fitful
+bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly prattle of
+young girls ready for anything and full of hope—experienced the same
+feeling; sharing with the young folk of the Rostóvs’ household a
+readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.
+
+Among the young men introduced by Rostóv one of the first was
+Dólokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natásha. She almost
+quarreled with her brother about him. She insisted that he was a bad
+man, and that in the duel with Bezúkhov, Pierre was right and Dólokhov
+wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and unnatural.
+
+“There’s nothing for me to understand,” she cried out with
+resolute self-will, “he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like
+your Denísov though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so
+you see I do understand. I don’t know how to put it... with this one
+everything is calculated, and I don’t like that. But Denísov...”
+
+“Oh, Denísov is quite different,” replied Nicholas, implying that
+even Denísov was nothing compared to Dólokhov—“you must understand
+what a soul there is in Dólokhov, you should see him with his mother.
+What a heart!”
+
+“Well, I don’t know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And
+do you know he has fallen in love with Sónya?”
+
+“What nonsense...”
+
+“I’m certain of it; you’ll see.”
+
+Natásha’s prediction proved true. Dólokhov, who did not usually care
+for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the
+question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon
+settled. He came because of Sónya. And Sónya, though she would never
+have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time Dólokhov
+appeared.
+
+Dólokhov often dined at the Rostóvs’, never missed a performance at
+which they were present, and went to Iogel’s balls for young people
+which the Rostóvs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sónya
+and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
+glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natásha blushed
+when they saw his looks.
+
+It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the irresistible
+influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.
+
+Rostóv noticed something new in Dólokhov’s relations with Sónya,
+but he did not explain to himself what these new relations were.
+“They’re always in love with someone,” he thought of Sónya and
+Natásha. But he was not as much at ease with Sónya and Dólokhov as
+before and was less frequently at home.
+
+In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war with
+Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders were
+given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the regular army,
+and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the militia. Everywhere
+Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow nothing but the coming war
+was talked of. For the Rostóv family the whole interest of these
+preparations for war lay in the fact that Nicholas would not hear of
+remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the termination of Denísov’s
+furlough after Christmas to return with him to their regiment. His
+approaching departure did not prevent his amusing himself, but rather
+gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away
+from home, at dinners, parties, and balls.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing he had
+rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he and Denísov
+were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people
+were present, including Dólokhov and Denísov.
+
+Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
+atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostóvs’ house as at
+this holiday time. “Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!
+That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one
+thing we are interested in here,” said the spirit of the place.
+
+Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without
+visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been invited,
+returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he noticed and
+felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also noticed a
+curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sónya, Dólokhov,
+and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a lesser degree
+Natásha. Nicholas understood that something must have happened between
+Sónya and Dólokhov before dinner, and with the kindly sensitiveness
+natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both at dinner. On
+that same evening there was to be one of the balls that Iogel (the
+dancing master) gave for his pupils during the holidays.
+
+“Nicholas, will you come to Iogel’s? Please do!” said Natásha.
+“He asked you, and Vasíli Dmítrich * is also going.”
+
+    * Denísov.
+
+“Where would I not go at the countess’ command!” said Denísov,
+who at the Rostóvs’ had jocularly assumed the role of Natásha’s
+knight. “I’m even weady to dance the pas de châle.”
+
+“If I have time,” answered Nicholas. “But I promised the
+Arkhárovs; they have a party.”
+
+“And you?” he asked Dólokhov, but as soon as he had asked the
+question he noticed that it should not have been put.
+
+“Perhaps,” coldly and angrily replied Dólokhov, glancing at Sónya,
+and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given Pierre
+at the club dinner.
+
+“There is something up,” thought Nicholas, and he was further
+confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dólokhov left immediately
+after dinner. He called Natásha and asked her what was the matter.
+
+“And I was looking for you,” said Natásha running out to him. “I
+told you, but you would not believe it,” she said triumphantly. “He
+has proposed to Sónya!”
+
+Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sónya of late, something
+seemed to give way within him at this news. Dólokhov was a suitable and
+in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless, orphan girl. From
+the point of view of the old countess and of society it was out of the
+question for her to refuse him. And therefore Nicholas’ first feeling
+on hearing the news was one of anger with Sónya.... He tried to say,
+“That’s capital; of course she’ll forget her childish promises
+and accept the offer,” but before he had time to say it Natásha began
+again.
+
+“And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!” adding, after a
+pause, “she told him she loved another.”
+
+“Yes, my Sónya could not have done otherwise!” thought Nicholas.
+
+“Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won’t change
+once she has said...”
+
+“And Mamma pressed her!” said Nicholas reproachfully.
+
+“Yes,” said Natásha. “Do you know, Nicholas—don’t be
+angry—but I know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but
+I know for certain that you won’t marry her.”
+
+“Now you don’t know that at all!” said Nicholas. “But I must
+talk to her. What a darling Sónya is!” he added with a smile.
+
+“Ah, she is indeed a darling! I’ll send her to you.”
+
+And Natásha kissed her brother and ran away.
+
+A minute later Sónya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared
+look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the first
+time since his return that they had talked alone and about their love.
+
+“Sophie,” he began, timidly at first and then more and more
+boldly, “if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and
+advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend...”
+
+Sónya interrupted him.
+
+“I have already refused,” she said hurriedly.
+
+“If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I...”
+
+Sónya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.
+
+“Nicholas, don’t tell me that!” she said.
+
+“No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to say
+it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole truth. I
+love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else....”
+
+“That is enough for me,” said Sónya, blushing.
+
+“No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in
+love again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,
+confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does
+not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider
+Dólokhov’s offer,” he said, articulating his friend’s name with
+difficulty.
+
+“Don’t say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and
+always shall, and I want nothing more.”
+
+“You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of
+misleading you.”
+
+And Nicholas again kissed her hand.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Iogel’s were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers
+as they watched their young people executing their newly learned steps,
+and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they
+were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and women who
+came to these balls with an air of condescension and found them most
+enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these balls. The two
+pretty young Princesses Gorchakóv met suitors there and were married
+and so further increased the fame of these dances. What distinguished
+them from others was the absence of host or hostess and the presence of
+the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a feather and bowing according
+to the rules of his art, as he collected the tickets from all his
+visitors. There was the fact that only those came who wished to dance
+and amuse themselves as girls of thirteen and fourteen do who are
+wearing long dresses for the first time. With scarcely any exceptions
+they all were, or seemed to be, pretty—so rapturous were their smiles
+and so sparkling their eyes. Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom
+Natásha, who was exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas
+de châle, but at this last ball only the écossaise, the anglaise, and
+the mazurka, which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had
+taken a ballroom in Bezúkhov’s house, and the ball, as everyone said,
+was a great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostóv girls
+were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay.
+That evening, proud of Dólokhov’s proposal, her refusal, and her
+explanation with Nicholas, Sónya twirled about before she left home
+so that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was
+transparently radiant with impulsive joy.
+
+Natásha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real
+ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with pink
+ribbons.
+
+Natásha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She
+was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever
+person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.
+
+“Oh, how delightful it is!” she kept saying, running up to Sónya.
+
+Nicholas and Denísov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
+patronage at the dancers.
+
+“How sweet she is—she will be a weal beauty!” said Denísov.
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Countess Natásha,” answered Denísov.
+
+“And how she dances! What gwace!” he said again after a pause.
+
+“Who are you talking about?”
+
+“About your sister,” ejaculated Denísov testily.
+
+Rostóv smiled.
+
+“My dear count, you were one of my best pupils—you must dance,”
+said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. “Look how many charming young
+ladies—” He turned with the same request to Denísov who was also a
+former pupil of his.
+
+“No, my dear fellow, I’ll be a wallflower,” said Denísov.
+“Don’t you wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?”
+
+“Oh no!” said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. “You were only
+inattentive, but you had talent—oh yes, you had talent!”
+
+The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not
+refuse Iogel and asked Sónya to dance. Denísov sat down by the old
+ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot, told
+them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the young
+people dancing, Iogel with Natásha, his pride and his best pupil, were
+the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with his little
+feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with Natásha, who,
+though shy, went on carefully executing her steps. Denísov did not
+take his eyes off her and beat time with his saber in a way that clearly
+indicated that if he was not dancing it was because he would not and not
+because he could not. In the middle of a figure he beckoned to Rostóv
+who was passing:
+
+“This is not at all the thing,” he said. “What sort of Polish
+mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly.”
+
+Knowing that Denísov had a reputation even in Poland for the masterly
+way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to Natásha:
+
+“Go and choose Denísov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!” he said.
+
+When it came to Natásha’s turn to choose a partner, she rose and,
+tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran
+timidly to the corner where Denísov sat. She saw that everybody was
+looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denísov was refusing
+though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.
+
+“Please, Vasíli Dmítrich,” Natásha was saying, “do come!”
+
+“Oh no, let me off, Countess,” Denísov replied.
+
+“Now then, Váska,” said Nicholas.
+
+“They coax me as if I were Váska the cat!” said Denísov jokingly.
+
+“I’ll sing for you a whole evening,” said Natásha.
+
+“Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!” said Denísov, and
+he unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his
+partner’s hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,
+waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was
+Denísov’s short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow
+he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked sideways
+at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly stamped with
+one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew round the room
+taking his partner with him. He glided silently on one foot half across
+the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs was dashing straight at
+them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and spreading out his legs,
+he stopped short on his heels, stood so a second, stamped on the spot
+clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round, and, striking his left heel
+against his right, flew round again in a circle. Natásha guessed what
+he meant to do, and abandoning herself to him followed his lead hardly
+knowing how. First he spun her round, holding her now with his left, now
+with his right hand, then falling on one knee he twirled her round him,
+and again jumping up, dashed so impetuously forward that it seemed as if
+he would rush through the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath,
+and then he suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected
+steps. When at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her
+chair, he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natásha
+did not even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement,
+smiling as if she did not recognize him.
+
+“What does this mean?” she brought out.
+
+Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka, everyone
+was delighted with Denísov’s skill, he was asked again and again as
+a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about Poland and the
+good old days. Denísov, flushed after the mazurka and mopping himself
+with his handkerchief, sat down by Natásha and did not leave her for
+the rest of the evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+For two days after that Rostóv did not see Dólokhov at his own or at
+Dólokhov’s home: on the third day he received a note from him:
+
+As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know
+of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell supper
+tonight to my friends—come to the English Hotel.
+
+About ten o’clock Rostóv went to the English Hotel straight from the
+theater, where he had been with his family and Denísov. He was at once
+shown to the best room, which Dólokhov had taken for that evening. Some
+twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dólokhov sat between
+two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper money, and he
+was keeping the bank. Rostóv had not seen him since his proposal and
+Sónya’s refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought of how they
+would meet.
+
+Dólokhov’s clear, cold glance met Rostóv as soon as he entered the
+door, as though he had long expected him.
+
+“It’s a long time since we met,” he said. “Thanks for coming.
+I’ll just finish dealing, and then Ilyúshka will come with his
+chorus.”
+
+“I called once or twice at your house,” said Rostóv, reddening.
+
+Dólokhov made no reply.
+
+“You may punt,” he said.
+
+Rostóv recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once had
+with Dólokhov. “None but fools trust to luck in play,” Dólokhov
+had then said.
+
+“Or are you afraid to play with me?” Dólokhov now asked as if
+guessing Rostóv’s thought.
+
+Beneath his smile Rostóv saw in him the mood he had shown at the club
+dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he had felt
+a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually cruel, action.
+
+Rostóv felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke with
+which to reply to Dólokhov’s words. But before he had thought of
+anything, Dólokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and
+deliberately so that everyone could hear:
+
+“Do you remember we had a talk about cards... ‘He’s a fool who
+trusts to luck, one should make certain,’ and I want to try.”
+
+“To try his luck or the certainty?” Rostóv asked himself.
+
+“Well, you’d better not play,” Dólokhov added, and springing a
+new pack of cards said: “Bank, gentlemen!”
+
+Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostóv sat down by his
+side and at first did not play. Dólokhov kept glancing at him.
+
+“Why don’t you play?” he asked.
+
+And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up a
+card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.
+
+“I have no money with me,” he said.
+
+“I’ll trust you.”
+
+Rostóv staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and again
+lost. Dólokhov “killed,” that is, beat, ten cards of Rostóv’s
+running.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said Dólokhov after he had dealt for some time.
+“Please place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the
+reckoning.”
+
+One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.
+
+“Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I
+ask you to put the money on your cards,” replied Dólokhov. “Don’t
+stint yourself, we’ll settle afterwards,” he added, turning to
+Rostóv.
+
+The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.
+
+All Rostóv’s cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles scored
+up against him. He wrote “800 rubles” on a card, but while the
+waiter filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to his usual
+stake of twenty rubles.
+
+“Leave it,” said Dólokhov, though he did not seem to be even
+looking at Rostóv, “you’ll win it back all the sooner. I lose to
+the others but win from you. Or are you afraid of me?” he asked again.
+
+Rostóv submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a seven
+of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the floor. He
+well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts,
+on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written “800 rubles” in
+clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm champagne that was
+handed him, smiled at Dólokhov’s words, and with a sinking heart,
+waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dólokhov’s hands which held
+the pack. Much depended on Rostóv’s winning or losing on that seven
+of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had given his son
+two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked speaking of money
+difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all he could let him have
+till May, and asked him to be more economical this time. Nicholas had
+replied that it would be more than enough for him and that he gave his
+word of honor not to take anything more till the spring. Now only twelve
+hundred rubles was left of that money, so that this seven of hearts
+meant for him not only the loss of sixteen hundred rubles, but the
+necessity of going back on his word. With a sinking heart he watched
+Dólokhov’s hands and thought, “Now then, make haste and let me have
+this card and I’ll take my cap and drive home to supper with Denísov,
+Natásha, and Sónya, and will certainly never touch a card again.” At
+that moment his home life, jokes with Pétya, talks with Sónya, duets
+with Natásha, piquet with his father, and even his comfortable bed
+in the house on the Povarskáya rose before him with such vividness,
+clearness, and charm that it seemed as if it were all a lost and
+unappreciated bliss, long past. He could not conceive that a stupid
+chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left,
+might deprive him of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly
+illumined, and plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined
+misery. That could not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the
+movement of Dólokhov’s hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy
+wrists visible from under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took
+up a glass and a pipe that were handed him.
+
+“So you are not afraid to play with me?” repeated Dólokhov, and as
+if about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in his
+chair, and began deliberately with a smile:
+
+“Yes, gentlemen, I’ve been told there’s a rumor going about Moscow
+that I’m a sharper, so I advise you to be careful.”
+
+“Come now, deal!” exclaimed Rostóv.
+
+“Oh, those Moscow gossips!” said Dólokhov, and he took up the cards
+with a smile.
+
+“Aah!” Rostóv almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The
+seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He had
+lost more than he could pay.
+
+“Still, don’t ruin yourself!” said Dólokhov with a side glance at
+Rostóv as he continued to deal.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+An hour and a half later most of the players were but little interested
+in their own play.
+
+The whole interest was concentrated on Rostóv. Instead of sixteen
+hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,
+which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely
+supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already
+exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dólokhov was no longer listening to
+stories or telling them, but followed every movement of Rostóv’s
+hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against him. He had
+decided to play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He
+had fixed on that number because forty-three was the sum of his and
+Sónya’s joint ages. Rostóv, leaning his head on both hands, sat at
+the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled wine,
+and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did not leave him:
+that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from
+under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he loved and hated, held him
+in their power.
+
+“Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back’s
+impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or
+quits... it can’t be!... And why is he doing this to me?” Rostóv
+pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dólokhov refused to
+accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at
+one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the bridge
+over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came first to hand
+from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now counted the
+cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried staking the
+total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from the other
+players, or peered at the now cold face of Dólokhov and tried to read
+what was passing in his mind.
+
+“He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can’t want my
+ruin. Wasn’t he my friend? Wasn’t I fond of him? But it’s not his
+fault. What’s he to do if he has such luck?... And it’s not my fault
+either,” he thought to himself, “I have done nothing wrong. Have I
+killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a terrible
+misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago I came to
+this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to buy that
+casket for Mamma’s name day and then going home. I was so happy, so
+free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I was! When did
+that end and when did this new, terrible state of things begin? What
+marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place at this table,
+chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned agile hands in the
+same way. When did it happen and what has happened? I am well and strong
+and still the same and in the same place. No, it can’t be! Surely it
+will all end in nothing!”
+
+He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot.
+His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless
+efforts to seem calm.
+
+The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand.
+Rostóv had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of which he
+meant to double the three thousand just put down to his score, when
+Dólokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began
+rapidly adding up the total of Rostóv’s debt, breaking the chalk as
+he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.
+
+“Supper, it’s time for supper! And here are the gypsies!”
+
+Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold outside
+and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas understood that it
+was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:
+
+“Well, won’t you go on? I had a splendid card all ready,” as if it
+were the fun of the game which interested him most.
+
+“It’s all up! I’m lost!” thought he. “Now a bullet through my
+brain—that’s all that’s left me!” And at the same time he said
+in a cheerful voice:
+
+“Come now, just this one more little card!”
+
+“All right!” said Dólokhov, having finished the addition. “All
+right! Twenty-one rubles,” he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one
+by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three thousand; and
+taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostóv submissively unbent the
+corner of his card and, instead of the six thousand he had intended,
+carefully wrote twenty-one.
+
+“It’s all the same to me,” he said. “I only want to see whether
+you will let me win this ten, or beat it.”
+
+Dólokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostóv detested at that
+moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy wrists,
+which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.
+
+“You owe forty-three thousand, Count,” said Dólokhov, and
+stretching himself he rose from the table. “One does get tired sitting
+so long,” he added.
+
+“Yes, I’m tired too,” said Rostóv.
+
+Dólokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to
+jest.
+
+“When am I to receive the money, Count?”
+
+Rostóv, flushing, drew Dólokhov into the next room.
+
+“I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?” he said.
+
+“I say, Rostóv,” said Dólokhov clearly, smiling and looking
+Nicholas straight in the eyes, “you know the saying, ‘Lucky in love,
+unlucky at cards.’ Your cousin is in love with you, I know.”
+
+“Oh, it’s terrible to feel oneself so in this man’s power,”
+thought Rostóv. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father and
+mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be to
+escape it all, and felt that Dólokhov knew that he could save him from
+all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a cat does
+with a mouse.
+
+“Your cousin...” Dólokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted
+him.
+
+“My cousin has nothing to do with this and it’s not necessary to
+mention her!” he exclaimed fiercely.
+
+“Then when am I to have it?”
+
+“Tomorrow,” replied Rostóv and left the room.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+To say “tomorrow” and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult,
+but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father,
+confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word of
+honor, was terrible.
+
+At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after returning
+from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round the clavichord.
+As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic atmosphere
+of love which pervaded the Rostóv household that winter and, now after
+Dólokhov’s proposal and Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown thicker
+round Sónya and Natásha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sónya
+and Natásha, in the light-blue dresses they had worn at the theater,
+looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing by the clavichord,
+happy and smiling. Véra was playing chess with Shinshín in the drawing
+room. The old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son,
+sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house.
+Denísov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord
+striking chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his
+eyes rolling as he sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, some
+verses called “Enchantress,” which he had composed, and to which he
+was trying to fit music:
+
+   Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
+   What magic power is this recalls me still?
+   What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
+   What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?
+
+He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his sparkling
+black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natásha.
+
+“Splendid! Excellent!” exclaimed Natásha. “Another verse,” she
+said, without noticing Nicholas.
+
+“Everything’s still the same with them,” thought Nicholas,
+glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Véra and his mother with
+the old lady.
+
+“Ah, and here’s Nicholas!” cried Natásha, running up to him.
+
+“Is Papa at home?” he asked.
+
+“I am so glad you’ve come!” said Natásha, without answering him.
+“We are enjoying ourselves! Vasíli Dmítrich is staying a day longer
+for my sake! Did you know?”
+
+“No, Papa is not back yet,” said Sónya.
+
+“Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!” called the old countess
+from the drawing room.
+
+Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently at her
+table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the dancing
+room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to persuade
+Natásha to sing.
+
+“All wight! All wight!” shouted Denísov. “It’s no good making
+excuses now! It’s your turn to sing the ba’cawolla—I entweat
+you!”
+
+The countess glanced at her silent son.
+
+“What is the matter?” she asked.
+
+“Oh, nothing,” said he, as if weary of being continually asked the
+same question. “Will Papa be back soon?”
+
+“I expect so.”
+
+“Everything’s the same with them. They know nothing about it! Where
+am I to go?” thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing room
+where the clavichord stood.
+
+Sónya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to
+Denísov’s favorite barcarolle. Natásha was preparing to sing.
+Denísov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
+
+Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
+
+“Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There’s
+nothing to be happy about!” thought he.
+
+Sónya struck the first chord of the prelude.
+
+“My God, I’m a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my brain
+is the only thing left me—not singing!” his thoughts ran on. “Go
+away? But where to? It’s one—let them sing!”
+
+He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denísov and the
+girls and avoiding their eyes.
+
+“Nikólenka, what is the matter?” Sónya’s eyes fixed on him
+seemed to ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
+
+Nicholas turned away from her. Natásha too, with her quick instinct,
+had instantly noticed her brother’s condition. But, though she noticed
+it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from
+sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself
+as young people often do. “No, I am too happy now to spoil my
+enjoyment by sympathy with anyone’s sorrow,” she felt, and she said
+to herself: “No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as
+I am.”
+
+“Now, Sónya!” she said, going to the very middle of the room, where
+she considered the resonance was best.
+
+Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet
+dancers do, Natásha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes,
+stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
+
+“Yes, that’s me!” she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with
+which Denísov followed her.
+
+“And what is she so pleased about?” thought Nicholas, looking at his
+sister. “Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?”
+
+Natásha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose,
+her eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
+surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
+produce at the same intervals and hold for the same time, but which
+leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill
+you and make you weep.
+
+Natásha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously,
+mainly because Denísov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang
+as a child, there was no longer in her singing that comical, childish,
+painstaking effect that had been in it before; but she did not yet sing
+well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her said: “It is not trained,
+but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained.” Only they generally
+said this some time after she had finished singing. While that untrained
+voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was
+sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in
+it and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal
+freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet untrained
+velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of art in singing that
+it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be altered without spoiling
+it.
+
+“What is this?” thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely
+opened eyes. “What has happened to her? How she is singing today!”
+And suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the
+next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided into
+three beats: “Oh mio crudele affetto.”... One, two, three... one,
+two, three... One... “Oh mio crudele affetto.”... One, two, three...
+One. “Oh, this senseless life of ours!” thought Nicholas. “All
+this misery, and money, and Dólokhov, and anger, and honor—it’s all
+nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natásha, now then, dearest!
+Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She’s taken it! Thank
+God!” And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si
+he sung a second, a third below the high note. “Ah, God! How fine! Did
+I really take it? How fortunate!” he thought.
+
+Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest
+in Rostóv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else
+in the world and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and
+Dólokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob
+and yet be happy....”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+It was long since Rostóv had felt such enjoyment from music as he
+did that day. But no sooner had Natásha finished her barcarolle than
+reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and went
+downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count
+came in from his club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing him
+drive up, went to meet him.
+
+“Well—had a good time?” said the old count, smiling gaily and
+proudly at his son.
+
+Nicholas tried to say “Yes,” but could not: and he nearly burst into
+sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son’s
+condition.
+
+“Ah, it can’t be avoided!” thought Nicholas, for the first and
+last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him feel
+ashamed of himself, he said, as if merely asking his father to let him
+have the carriage to drive to town:
+
+“Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. I
+need some money.”
+
+“Dear me!” said his father, who was in a specially good humor. “I
+told you it would not be enough. How much?”
+
+“Very much,” said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless
+smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, “I have lost a
+little, I mean a good deal, a great deal—forty three thousand.”
+
+“What! To whom?... Nonsense!” cried the count, suddenly reddening
+with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.
+
+“I promised to pay tomorrow,” said Nicholas.
+
+“Well!...” said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking
+helplessly on the sofa.
+
+“It can’t be helped! It happens to everyone!” said the son, with
+a bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a
+worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He
+longed to kiss his father’s hands and kneel to beg his forgiveness,
+but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it happens to
+everyone!
+
+The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son’s words and began
+bustlingly searching for something.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “it will be difficult, I fear, difficult
+to raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?”
+
+And with a furtive glance at his son’s face, the count went out of the
+room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all
+expected this.
+
+“Papa! Pa-pa!” he called after him, sobbing, “forgive me!” And
+seizing his father’s hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into
+tears.
+
+While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and
+daughter were having one not less important. Natásha came running to
+her mother, quite excited.
+
+“Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me...”
+
+“Made what?”
+
+“Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!” she exclaimed.
+
+The countess did not believe her ears. Denísov had proposed. To whom?
+To this chit of a girl, Natásha, who not so long ago was playing with
+dolls and who was still having lessons.
+
+“Don’t, Natásha! What nonsense!” she said, hoping it was a joke.
+
+“Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact,” said Natásha
+indignantly. “I come to ask you what to do, and you call it
+‘nonsense!’”
+
+The countess shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“If it is true that Monsieur Denísov has made you a proposal, tell
+him he is a fool, that’s all!”
+
+“No, he’s not a fool!” replied Natásha indignantly and seriously.
+
+“Well then, what do you want? You’re all in love nowadays. Well,
+if you are in love, marry him!” said the countess, with a laugh of
+annoyance. “Good luck to you!”
+
+“No, Mamma, I’m not in love with him, I suppose I’m not in love
+with him.”
+
+“Well then, tell him so.”
+
+“Mamma, are you cross? Don’t be cross, dear! Is it my fault?”
+
+“No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?”
+said the countess smiling.
+
+“No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It’s all very
+well for you,” said Natásha, with a responsive smile. “You should
+have seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came
+out accidently.”
+
+“Well, all the same, you must refuse him.”
+
+“No, I mustn’t. I am so sorry for him! He’s so nice.”
+
+“Well then, accept his offer. It’s high time for you to be
+married,” answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.
+
+“No, Mamma, but I’m so sorry for him. I don’t know how I’m to
+say it.”
+
+“And there’s nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,”
+said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this
+little Natásha as grown up.
+
+“No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you’ll listen
+at the door,” and Natásha ran across the drawing room to the dancing
+hall, where Denísov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord
+with his face in his hands.
+
+He jumped up at the sound of her light step.
+
+“Nataly,” he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, “decide my
+fate. It is in your hands.”
+
+“Vasíli Dmítrich, I’m so sorry for you!... No, but you are so
+nice... but it won’t do...not that... but as a friend, I shall always
+love you.”
+
+Denísov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did not
+understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this instant, they
+heard the quick rustle of the countess’ dress. She came up to them.
+
+“Vasíli Dmítrich, I thank you for the honor,” she said, with an
+embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denísov—“but my
+daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son’s friend, you
+would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would not
+have obliged me to give this refusal.”
+
+“Countess...” said Denísov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face.
+He tried to say more, but faltered.
+
+Natásha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She began
+to sob aloud.
+
+“Countess, I have done w’ong,” Denísov went on in an unsteady
+voice, “but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family
+that I would give my life twice over...” He looked at the countess,
+and seeing her severe face said: “Well, good-by, Countess,” and
+kissing her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without
+looking at Natásha.
+
+
+Next day Rostóv saw Denísov off. He did not wish to stay another
+day in Moscow. All Denísov’s Moscow friends gave him a farewell
+entertainment at the gypsies’, with the result that he had no
+recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three
+stages of his journey.
+
+After Denísov’s departure, Rostóv spent another fortnight in Moscow,
+without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could
+not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls’ room.
+
+Sónya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she
+wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her
+love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of
+her.
+
+He filled the girls’ albums with verses and music, and having at last
+sent Dólokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and received his
+receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking leave of any of
+his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which was already in Poland.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
+Torzhók post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
+would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
+he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
+feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.
+
+“Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
+tea?” asked his valet.
+
+Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
+begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
+question—one so important that he took no notice of what went
+on around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to
+Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at this
+station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it was a
+matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours or for
+the rest of his life.
+
+The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling
+Torzhók embroidery came into the room offering their services.
+Without changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his
+spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could go on
+living without having solved the problems that so absorbed him. He had
+been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day he returned from
+Sokólniki after the duel and had spent that first agonizing, sleepless
+night. But now, in the solitude of the journey, they seized him with
+special force. No matter what he thought about, he always returned to
+these same questions which he could not solve and yet could not cease to
+ask himself. It was as if the thread of the chief screw which held his
+life together were stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out,
+but went on turning uselessly in the same place.
+
+The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his excellency to
+wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let his excellency
+have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted
+to get more money from the traveler.
+
+“Is this good or bad?” Pierre asked himself. “It is good for me,
+bad for another traveler, and for himself it’s unavoidable, because
+he needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a
+thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses.
+But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as
+possible. And I,” continued Pierre, “shot Dólokhov because I
+considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they
+considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who
+executed him—also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What
+should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I?
+What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?”
+
+There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that
+not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was:
+“You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease
+asking.” But dying was also dreadful.
+
+The Torzhók peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her
+wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. “I have hundreds of
+rubles I don’t know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered
+cloak looking timidly at me,” he thought. “And what does she
+want the money for? As if that money could add a hair’s breadth to
+happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me
+less a prey to evil and death?—death which ends all and must come
+today or tomorrow—at any rate, in an instant as compared with
+eternity.” And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread,
+and again it turned uselessly in the same place.
+
+His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters, by
+Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous
+struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. “And why did she resist
+her seducer when she loved him?” he thought. “God could not have put
+into her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife—as she
+once was—did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has been
+found out, nothing discovered,” Pierre again said to himself. “All
+we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human
+wisdom.”
+
+Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and
+repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre
+found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.
+
+“I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this
+gentleman,” said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another
+traveler, also detained for lack of horses.
+
+The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old
+man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite
+grayish color.
+
+Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a bed that
+had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the newcomer, who,
+with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off his wraps with the
+aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With a pair of felt boots
+on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn, nankeen-covered, sheepskin
+coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa, leaned back his big head with
+its broad temples and close-cropped hair, and looked at Bezúkhov. The
+stern, shrewd, and penetrating expression of that look struck Pierre. He
+felt a wish to speak to the stranger, but by the time he had made up his
+mind to ask him a question about the roads, the traveler had closed his
+eyes. His shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of
+them Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a
+death’s head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as
+it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant
+was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,
+evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never grown.
+This active old servant was unpacking the traveler’s canteen and
+preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything was
+ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled a
+tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to whom
+he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the
+need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with this
+stranger.
+
+The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down, * with an
+unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be
+wanted.
+
+    * To indicate he did not want more tea.
+
+“No. Give me the book,” said the stranger.
+
+The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional work,
+and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him. All at
+once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and again,
+leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his former
+position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not time
+to turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady and
+severe gaze straight on Pierre’s face.
+
+Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright old
+eyes attracted him irresistibly.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+“I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezúkhov, if I am not
+mistaken,” said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.
+
+Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.
+
+“I have heard of you, my dear sir,” continued the stranger, “and
+of your misfortune.” He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to
+say—“Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what
+happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune.”—“I regret it very
+much, my dear sir.”
+
+Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed, bent
+forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.
+
+“I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but for
+greater reasons.”
+
+He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa by way
+of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt reluctant
+to enter into conversation with this old man, but, submitting to him
+involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.
+
+“You are unhappy, my dear sir,” the stranger continued. “You
+are young and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my
+power.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” said Pierre, with a forced smile. “I am very grateful
+to you. Where are you traveling from?”
+
+The stranger’s face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but
+in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were
+irresistibly attractive to Pierre.
+
+“But if for any reason you don’t feel inclined to talk to me,”
+said the old man, “say so, my dear sir.” And he suddenly smiled, in
+an unexpected and tenderly paternal way.
+
+“Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your
+acquaintance,” said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger’s
+hands, he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull—a Masonic
+sign.
+
+“Allow me to ask,” he said, “are you a Mason?”
+
+“Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons,” said the
+stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre’s eyes. “And in
+their name and my own I hold out a brotherly hand to you.”
+
+“I am afraid,” said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the
+confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his own
+habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs—“I am afraid I am very far
+from understanding—how am I to put it?—I am afraid my way of looking
+at the world is so opposed to yours that we shall not understand one
+another.”
+
+“I know your outlook,” said the Mason, “and the view of life you
+mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,
+is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit
+of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if I
+had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of life is a
+regrettable delusion.”
+
+“Just as I may suppose you to be deluded,” said Pierre, with a faint
+smile.
+
+“I should never dare to say that I know the truth,” said the Mason,
+whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision and firmness.
+“No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone
+with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our
+forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be
+a worthy dwelling place of the Great God,” he added, and closed his
+eyes.
+
+“I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in
+God,” said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it
+essential to speak the whole truth.
+
+The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with
+millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he, poor
+man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.
+
+“Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir,” said the Mason. “You
+cannot know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I am unhappy,” assented Pierre. “But what am I to
+do?”
+
+“You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You do
+not know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He is in
+thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just uttered!”
+pronounced the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.
+
+He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.
+
+“If He were not,” he said quietly, “you and I would not be
+speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking? Whom
+hast thou denied?” he suddenly asked with exulting austerity and
+authority in his voice. “Who invented Him, if He did not exist? Whence
+came thy conception of the existence of such an incomprehensible Being?
+didst thou, and why did the whole world, conceive the idea of the
+existence of such an incomprehensible Being, a Being all-powerful,
+eternal, and infinite in all His attributes?...”
+
+He stopped and remained silent for a long time.
+
+Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.
+
+“He exists, but to understand Him is hard,” the Mason began again,
+looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the leaves
+of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could not keep
+still. “If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I could
+bring him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to thee. But
+how can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence, His infinity,
+and all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts his eyes that he may
+not see or understand Him and may not see or understand his own vileness
+and sinfulness?” He paused again. “Who art thou? Thou dreamest that
+thou art wise because thou couldst utter those blasphemous words,” he
+went on, with a somber and scornful smile. “And thou art more foolish
+and unreasonable than a little child, who, playing with the parts of a
+skillfully made watch, dares to say that, as he does not understand
+its use, he does not believe in the master who made it. To know Him is
+hard.... For ages, from our forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to
+attain that knowledge and are still infinitely far from our aim; but
+in our lack of understanding we see only our weakness and His
+greatness....”
+
+Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason’s face with
+shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but believing with
+his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he accepted the wise
+reasoning contained in the Mason’s words, or believed as a child
+believes, in the speaker’s tone of conviction and earnestness, or
+the tremor of the speaker’s voice—which sometimes almost broke—or
+those brilliant aged eyes grown old in this conviction, or the calm
+firmness and certainty of his vocation, which radiated from his whole
+being (and which struck Pierre especially by contrast with his own
+dejection and hopelessness)—at any rate, Pierre longed with his whole
+soul to believe and he did believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort,
+regeneration, and return to life.
+
+“He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life,” said the
+Mason.
+
+“I do not understand,” said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts
+reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness, in
+the Mason’s arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him.
+“I don’t understand,” he said, “how it is that the mind of man
+cannot attain the knowledge of which you speak.”
+
+The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.
+
+“The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish
+to imbibe,” he said. “Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure
+vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of myself
+can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive.”
+
+“Yes, yes, that is so,” said Pierre joyfully.
+
+“The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those
+worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into
+which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one.
+The highest wisdom has but one science—the science of the whole—the
+science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it. To
+receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one’s inner
+self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to
+perfect one’s self. And to attain this end, we have the light called
+conscience that God has implanted in our souls.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” assented Pierre.
+
+“Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask
+thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained
+relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich, you
+are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all these
+good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?”
+
+“No, I hate my life,” Pierre muttered, wincing.
+
+“Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art
+purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir.
+How have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving
+everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have become
+the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you done
+for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of thousands
+of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally? No! You have
+profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is what you have
+done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of service to your
+neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness. Then you married, my
+dear sir—took on yourself responsibility for the guidance of a young
+woman; and what have you done? You have not helped her to find the way
+of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an abyss of deceit and
+misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and you say you do not
+know God and hate your life. There is nothing strange in that, my dear
+sir!”
+
+After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse, again
+leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Pierre
+looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face and moved
+his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, “Yes, a vile,
+idle, vicious life!” but dared not break the silence.
+
+The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called his
+servant.
+
+“How about the horses?” he asked, without looking at Pierre.
+
+“The exchange horses have just come,” answered the servant. “Will
+you not rest here?”
+
+“No, tell them to harness.”
+
+“Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me
+all, and without promising to help me?” thought Pierre, rising with
+downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at
+the Mason. “Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a contemptible
+and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not want to,”
+thought Pierre. “But this man knows the truth and, if he wished to,
+could disclose it to me.”
+
+Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The
+traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began
+fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezúkhov, and
+said in a tone of indifferent politeness:
+
+“Where are you going to now, my dear sir?”
+
+“I?... I’m going to Petersburg,” answered Pierre, in a childlike,
+hesitating voice. “I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But
+do not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what you
+would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it is
+I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me, and
+perhaps I may...”
+
+Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.
+
+The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.
+
+“Help comes from God alone,” he said, “but such measure of help as
+our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to
+Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski” (he took out his notebook
+and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four).
+“Allow me to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital,
+first of all devote some time to solitude and self-examination and do
+not resume your former way of life. And now I wish you a good journey,
+my dear sir,” he added, seeing that his servant had entered... “and
+success.”
+
+The traveler was Joseph Alexéevich Bazdéev, as Pierre saw from the
+postmaster’s book. Bazdéev had been one of the best-known Freemasons
+and Martinists, even in Novíkov’s time. For a long while after he had
+gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and down
+the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous sense
+of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful, irreproachable,
+virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It seemed to him that he had
+been vicious only because he had somehow forgotten how good it is to
+be virtuous. Not a trace of his former doubts remained in his soul. He
+firmly believed in the possibility of the brotherhood of men united in
+the aim of supporting one another in the path of virtue, and that is how
+Freemasonry presented itself to him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his arrival,
+he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas à Kempis, whose
+book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing he continually
+realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him,
+of believing in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in the
+possibility of active brotherly love among men, which Joseph Alexéevich
+had revealed to him. A week after his arrival, the young Polish count,
+Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in Petersburg society, came
+into his room one evening in the official and ceremonious manner in
+which Dólokhov’s second had called on him, and, having closed the
+door behind him and satisfied himself that there was nobody else in the
+room, addressed Pierre.
+
+“I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count,” he
+said without sitting down. “A person of very high standing in our
+Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order
+before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I
+consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person’s wishes. Do you wish
+to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?”
+
+The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always before met
+at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most brilliant women,
+surprised Pierre.
+
+“Yes, I do wish it,” said he.
+
+Willarski bowed his head.
+
+“One more question, Count,” he said, “which I beg you to answer
+in all sincerity—not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you
+renounced your former convictions—do you believe in God?”
+
+Pierre considered.
+
+“Yes... yes, I believe in God,” he said.
+
+“In that case...” began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.
+
+“Yes, I do believe in God,” he repeated.
+
+“In that case we can go,” said Willarski. “My carriage is at your
+service.”
+
+Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre’s inquiries as
+to what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied that
+brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had only to
+tell the truth.
+
+Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had its
+headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a small
+well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the aid of
+a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in strange
+attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him, said
+something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to a small
+wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never seen
+before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski bound
+Pierre’s eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching some
+hairs painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed him, and
+taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the knot hurt
+Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a shamefaced smile.
+His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a puckered, though
+smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain, timid steps.
+
+Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.
+
+“Whatever happens to you,” he said, “you must bear it all manfully
+if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood.” (Pierre nodded
+affirmatively.) “When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover
+your eyes,” added Willarski. “I wish you courage and success,”
+and, pressing Pierre’s hand, he went out.
+
+Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice
+he shrugged his shoulders and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if
+wishing to take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent
+with his eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb,
+his legs almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He
+experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of what
+would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He felt
+curious to know what was going to happen and what would be revealed to
+him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had come when he
+would at last start on that path of regeneration and on the actively
+virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he met Joseph
+Alexéevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took the bandage
+off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black darkness,
+only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre went nearer
+and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which lay an open book.
+The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with the lamp inside was a
+human skull with its cavities and teeth. After reading the first words
+of the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with
+God,” Pierre went round the table and saw a large open box filled
+with something. It was a coffin with bones inside. He was not at all
+surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on an entirely new life quite
+unlike the old one, he expected everything to be unusual, even more
+unusual than what he was seeing. A skull, a coffin, the Gospel—it
+seemed to him that he had expected all this and even more. Trying
+to stimulate his emotions he looked around. “God, death, love, the
+brotherhood of man,” he kept saying to himself, associating these
+words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened and someone came in.
+
+By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed, he
+saw a rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the
+darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the
+table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.
+
+This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his chest and
+part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which rose a high
+white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit up from
+below.
+
+“For what have you come hither?” asked the newcomer, turning in
+Pierre’s direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. “Why have
+you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not
+seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,
+enlightenment?”
+
+At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre felt a
+sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his boyhood at
+confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially a complete
+stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man. With bated
+breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by which name the
+brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the Brotherhood was
+known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor a man he knew,
+Smolyanínov, and it mortified him to think that the newcomer was an
+acquaintance—he wished him simply a brother and a virtuous instructor.
+For a long time he could not utter a word, so that the Rhetor had to
+repeat his question.
+
+“Yes... I... I... desire regeneration,” Pierre uttered with
+difficulty.
+
+“Very well,” said Smolyanínov, and went on at once: “Have you any
+idea of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach your
+aim?” said he quietly and quickly.
+
+“I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration,” said Pierre,
+with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his
+excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in
+Russian.
+
+“What is your conception of Freemasonry?”
+
+“I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men who
+have virtuous aims,” said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the inadequacy
+of his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he spoke. “I
+imagine...”
+
+“Good!” said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with
+this answer. “Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in
+religion?”
+
+“No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it,” said Pierre,
+so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him what he was
+saying. “I have been an atheist,” answered Pierre.
+
+“You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,
+therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?” said the
+Rhetor, after a moment’s pause.
+
+“Yes, yes,” assented Pierre.
+
+The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his breast,
+and began to speak.
+
+“Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order,” he said,
+“and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood
+with profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation on
+which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the preservation
+and handing on to posterity of a certain important mystery... which
+has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from the first man—a
+mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends. But since this
+mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use it unless he be
+prepared by long and diligent self-purification, not everyone can hope
+to attain it quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim, that of preparing
+our members as much as possible to reform their hearts, to purify and
+enlighten their minds, by means handed on to us by tradition from those
+who have striven to attain this mystery, and thereby to render them
+capable of receiving it.
+
+“By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to improve
+the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of piety
+and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the evil which
+sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you again.”
+
+“To combat the evil which sways the world...” Pierre repeated, and a
+mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his mind.
+He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and he
+addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself
+vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and deed,
+imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the three
+objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving mankind,
+especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery mentioned by the
+Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem to him essential,
+and the second aim, that of purifying and regenerating himself, did not
+much interest him because at that moment he felt with delight that he
+was already perfectly cured of his former faults and was ready for all
+that was good.
+
+Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of the
+seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon’s temple,
+which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These virtues were:
+1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order. 2. Obedience to
+those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4. Love of mankind. 5.
+Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.
+
+“In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death,” the
+Rhetor said, “to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but
+as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue
+from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense and
+peace.”
+
+“Yes, that must be so,” thought Pierre, when after these words the
+Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. “It must be so,
+but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which is only
+now gradually opening before me.” But five of the other virtues which
+Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt already in his
+soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind, and especially
+obedience—which did not even seem to him a virtue, but a joy. (He now
+felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to submit his will
+to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot what the seventh
+virtue was and could not recall it.
+
+The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre
+whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to
+all that would be required of him.
+
+“I am ready for everything,” said Pierre.
+
+“I must also inform you,” said the Rhetor, “that our Order
+delivers its teaching not in words only but also by other means, which
+may perhaps have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after wisdom
+and virtue than mere words. This chamber with what you see therein
+should already have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere, more than
+words could do. You will perhaps also see in your further initiation a
+like method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the ancient societies
+that explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A hieroglyph,” said
+the Rhetor, “is an emblem of something not cognizable by the senses
+but which possesses qualities resembling those of the symbol.”
+
+Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He
+listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his
+ordeal was about to begin.
+
+“If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation,” said the Rhetor
+coming closer to Pierre. “In token of generosity I ask you to give me
+all your valuables.”
+
+“But I have nothing here,” replied Pierre, supposing that he was
+asked to give up all he possessed.
+
+“What you have with you: watch, money, rings....”
+
+Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage for
+some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that had been
+done, the Rhetor said:
+
+“In token of obedience, I ask you to undress.”
+
+Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to the
+Rhetor’s instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre’s
+left breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his trousers
+to above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his right boot also
+and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save this stranger the
+trouble, but the Mason told him that was not necessary and gave him
+a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike smile of embarrassment,
+doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on his face against his will,
+Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and legs apart, before his
+brother Rhetor, and awaited his further commands.
+
+“And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief
+passion,” said the latter.
+
+“My passion! I have had so many,” replied Pierre.
+
+“That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on the
+path of virtue,” said the Mason.
+
+Pierre paused, seeking a reply.
+
+“Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?”
+He went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to give
+the pre-eminence.
+
+“Women,” he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.
+
+The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this
+answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that lay
+on the table, again bound his eyes.
+
+“For the last time I say to you—turn all your attention upon
+yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in
+passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not without
+us but within....”
+
+Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing source
+of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre, not
+the Rhetor but Pierre’s sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized by his
+voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his resolution Pierre
+replied: “Yes, yes, I agree,” and with a beaming, childlike smile,
+his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and timidly in one slippered
+and one booted foot, he advanced, while Willarski held a sword to his
+bare chest. He was conducted from that room along passages that turned
+backwards and forwards and was at last brought to the doors of the
+Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was answered by the Masonic knock with
+mallets, the doors opened before them. A bass voice (Pierre was still
+blindfolded) questioned him as to who he was, when and where he was
+born, and so on. Then he was again led somewhere still blindfolded,
+and as they went along he was told allegories of the toils of his
+pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of the Eternal Architect of the
+universe, and of the courage with which he should endure toils and
+dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre noticed that he was spoken
+of now as the “Seeker,” now as the “Sufferer,” and now as the
+“Postulant,” to the accompaniment of various knockings with
+mallets and swords. As he was being led up to some object he noticed a
+hesitation and uncertainty among his conductors. He heard those around
+him disputing in whispers and one of them insisting that he should be
+led along a certain carpet. After that they took his right hand, placed
+it on something, and told him to hold a pair of compasses to his left
+breast with the other hand and to repeat after someone who read aloud
+an oath of fidelity to the laws of the Order. The candles were then
+extinguished and some spirit lighted, as Pierre knew by the smell, and
+he was told that he would now see the lesser light. The bandage was
+taken off his eyes and, by the faint light of the burning spirit,
+Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men standing before him, wearing
+aprons like the Rhetor’s and holding swords in their hands pointed at
+his breast. Among them stood a man whose white shirt was stained with
+blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved forward with his breast toward the
+swords, meaning them to pierce it. But the swords were drawn back from
+him and he was at once blindfolded again.
+
+“Now thou hast seen the lesser light,” uttered a voice. Then the
+candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light; the
+bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said together: “Sic
+transit gloria mundi.”
+
+Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the room
+and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black sat some
+twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some of them
+Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President’s chair sat a
+young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from his
+neck. On his right sat the Italian abbé whom Pierre had met at
+Anna Pávlovna’s two years before. There were also present a very
+distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the
+Kurágins’. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words
+of the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was
+a star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet with
+various figures worked upon it, at the other was something resembling an
+altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it stood seven large
+candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the brothers led Pierre
+up to the altar, placed his feet at right angles, and bade him lie down,
+saying that he must prostrate himself at the Gates of the Temple.
+
+“He must first receive the trowel,” whispered one of the brothers.
+
+“Oh, hush, please!” said another.
+
+Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without
+obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. “Where am I? What am
+I doing? Aren’t they laughing at me? Shan’t I be ashamed to remember
+this?” But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at
+the serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
+through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast
+at his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,
+prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the
+feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before. When
+he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white leather
+apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a trowel
+and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master addressed him. He
+told him that he should try to do nothing to stain the whiteness of that
+apron, which symbolized strength and purity; then of the unexplained
+trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse his own heart from vice,
+and indulgently to smooth with it the heart of his neighbor. As to the
+first pair of gloves, a man’s, he said that Pierre could not know
+their meaning but must keep them. The second pair of man’s gloves
+he was to wear at the meetings, and finally of the third, a pair of
+women’s gloves, he said: “Dear brother, these woman’s gloves are
+intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most
+of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to her whom
+you select to be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry.” And after a pause,
+he added: “But beware, dear brother, that these gloves do not deck
+hands that are unclean.” While the Grand Master said these last words
+it seemed to Pierre that he grew embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still
+more confused, blushed like a child till tears came to his eyes, began
+looking about him uneasily, and an awkward pause followed.
+
+This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to the
+rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation of
+all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a
+trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows, and
+so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs of
+the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit down.
+The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very long, and
+Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a state to
+understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the last words
+of the statutes and these remained in his mind.
+
+“In our temples we recognize no other distinctions,” read the Grand
+Master, “but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any
+distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother’s aid
+whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that falleth,
+never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and courteous.
+Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy happiness with thy
+neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that bliss. Forgive thy
+enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him good. Thus fulfilling
+the highest law thou shalt regain traces of the ancient dignity which
+thou hast lost.”
+
+He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with tears
+of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to answer the
+congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met him on all
+sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all these men only
+brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work with them.
+
+The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down in
+their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the necessity of
+humility.
+
+The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed,
+and the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of “Collector
+of Alms” went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked
+to subscribe all he had, but fearing that it might look like pride
+subscribed the same amount as the others.
+
+The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he had
+returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of years, had
+become completely changed, and had quite left behind his former habits
+and way of life.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was sitting at
+home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance of the Square,
+one side of which symbolized God, another moral things, a third
+physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now and then
+his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he formed in
+imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at the Lodge, he
+had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the Emperor and that it
+would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre proposed going to his
+estates in the south and there attending to the welfare of his serfs.
+He was joyfully planning this new life, when Prince Vasíli suddenly
+entered the room.
+
+“My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
+quarreled with Hélène, mon cher? You are under a delusion,” said
+Prince Vasíli, as he entered. “I know all about it, and I can tell
+you positively that Hélène is as innocent before you as Christ was
+before the Jews.”
+
+Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasíli interrupted him.
+
+“And why didn’t you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I
+know all about it and understand it all,” he said. “You behaved as
+becomes a man who values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won’t
+go into that. But consider the position in which you are placing her and
+me in the eyes of society, and even of the court,” he added, lowering
+his voice. “She is living in Moscow and you are here. Remember,
+dear boy,” and he drew Pierre’s arm downwards, “it is simply a
+misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her
+a letter at once, and she’ll come here and all will be explained, or
+else, my dear boy, let me tell you it’s quite likely you’ll have to
+suffer for it.”
+
+Prince Vasíli gave Pierre a significant look.
+
+“I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a
+keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to
+Hélène.”
+
+Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasíli
+did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to
+speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he had
+firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words of the
+Masonic statutes, “be kindly and courteous,” recurred to him. He
+blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with himself
+to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life—to say an
+unpleasant thing to a man’s face, to say what the other, whoever
+he might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to Prince
+Vasíli’s tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he would be
+unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what he said now
+his future depended—whether he would follow the same old road, or that
+new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on which he firmly
+believed he would be reborn to a new life.
+
+“Now, dear boy,” said Prince Vasíli playfully, “say ‘yes,’
+and I’ll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf.”
+
+But before Prince Vasíli had finished his playful speech, Pierre,
+without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his
+father, muttered in a whisper:
+
+“Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!” And he jumped up
+and opened the door for him.
+
+“Go!” he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of
+confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasíli’s face.
+
+“What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?”
+
+“Go!” the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasíli had to go
+without receiving any explanation.
+
+A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the Masons,
+and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went away to his
+estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and Odessa Masons
+and promised to write to him and guide him in his new activity.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The duel between Pierre and Dólokhov was hushed up and, in spite of
+the Emperor’s severity regarding duels at that time, neither the
+principals nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the duel,
+confirmed by Pierre’s rupture with his wife, was the talk of society.
+Pierre who had been regarded with patronizing condescension when he was
+an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was the best
+match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society after his
+marriage—when the marriageable daughters and their mothers had nothing
+to hope from him—especially as he did not know how, and did not
+wish, to court society’s favor. Now he alone was blamed for what had
+happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and subject like his
+father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after Pierre’s
+departure Hélène returned to Petersburg, she was received by all her
+acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade of deference
+due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her husband Hélène
+assumed a dignified expression, which with characteristic tact she had
+acquired though she did not understand its significance. This expression
+suggested that she had resolved to endure her troubles uncomplainingly
+and that her husband was a cross laid upon her by God. Prince Vasíli
+expressed his opinion more openly. He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre
+was mentioned and, pointing to his forehead, remarked:
+
+“A bit touched—I always said so.”
+
+“I said from the first,” declared Anna Pávlovna referring to
+Pierre, “I said at the time and before anyone else” (she insisted
+on her priority) “that that senseless young man was spoiled by the
+depraved ideas of these days. I said so even at the time when everybody
+was in raptures about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and
+when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my soirees.
+And how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then and foretold
+all that has happened.”
+
+Anna Pávlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of
+soirees as before—such as she alone had the gift of arranging—at
+which was to be found “the cream of really good society, the bloom
+of the intellectual essence of Petersburg,” as she herself put it.
+Besides this refined selection of society Anna Pávlovna’s receptions
+were also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new
+and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the
+state of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court
+society so dearly and distinctly indicated.
+
+Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon’s
+destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstädt and the
+surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when our
+troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with Napoleon
+was beginning, Anna Pávlovna gave one of her soirees. The “cream of
+really good society” consisted of the fascinating Hélène, forsaken
+by her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte who had
+just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a young man
+referred to in that drawing room as “a man of great merit” (un homme
+de beaucoup de mérite), a newly appointed maid of honor and her mother,
+and several other less noteworthy persons.
+
+The novelty Anna Pávlovna was setting before her guests that evening
+was Borís Drubetskóy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from
+the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.
+
+The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company that
+evening was this:
+
+“Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to
+countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance and
+mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not cease
+to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say to the
+King of Prussia and others: ‘So much the worse for you. Tu l’as
+voulu, George Dandin,’ that’s all we have to say about it!”
+
+When Borís, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the drawing
+room, almost all the company had assembled, and the conversation, guided
+by Anna Pávlovna, was about our diplomatic relations with Austria and
+the hope of an alliance with her.
+
+Borís, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and self-possessed,
+entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the uniform of an
+aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his respects to the aunt and
+then brought back to the general circle.
+
+Anna Pávlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him to
+several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered description
+of each.
+
+“Prince Hippolyte Kurágin—charming young fellow; M.
+Kronq,—chargé d’affaires from Copenhagen—a profound intellect,”
+and simply, “Mr. Shítov—a man of great merit”—this of the man
+usually so described.
+
+Thanks to Anna Mikháylovna’s efforts, his own tastes, and the
+peculiarities of his reserved nature, Borís had managed during his
+service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a
+very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
+Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He had
+become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which he had
+been so pleased at Olmütz and according to which an ensign might rank
+incomparably higher than a general, and according to which what was
+needed for success in the service was not effort or work, or courage, or
+perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to get on with those who can
+grant rewards, and he was himself often surprised at the rapidity of his
+success and at the inability of others to understand these things.
+In consequence of this discovery his whole manner of life, all
+his relations with old friends, all his plans for his future, were
+completely altered. He was not rich, but would spend his last groat to
+be better dressed than others, and would rather deprive himself of many
+pleasures than allow himself to be seen in a shabby equipage or appear
+in the streets of Petersburg in an old uniform. He made friends with
+and sought the acquaintance of only those above him in position and
+who could therefore be of use to him. He liked Petersburg and despised
+Moscow. The remembrance of the Rostóvs’ house and of his childish
+love for Natásha was unpleasant to him and he had not once been to see
+the Rostóvs since the day of his departure for the army. To be in Anna
+Pávlovna’s drawing room he considered an important step up in the
+service, and he at once understood his role, letting his hostess make
+use of whatever interest he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned
+each face, appraising the possibilities of establishing intimacy with
+each of those present, and the advantages that might accrue. He took
+the seat indicated to him beside the fair Hélène and listened to the
+general conversation.
+
+“Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable
+that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure
+them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the
+actual phrase used by the Vienna cabinet,” said the Danish chargé
+d’affaires.
+
+“The doubt is flattering,” said “the man of profound intellect,”
+with a subtle smile.
+
+“We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of
+Austria,” said Mortemart. “The Emperor of Austria can never have
+thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it.”
+
+“Ah, my dear vicomte,” put in Anna Pávlovna, “L’Urope” (for
+some reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined
+French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing with
+a Frenchman), “L’Urope ne sera jamais notre alliée sincère.” *
+
+    * “Europe will never be our sincere ally.”
+
+
+After that Anna Pávlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the King
+of Prussia, in order to draw Borís into the conversation.
+
+Borís listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his turn,
+but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his neighbor, the
+beautiful Hélène, whose eyes several times met those of the handsome
+young aide-de-camp with a smile.
+
+Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pávlovna very naturally asked
+Borís to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state he
+found the Prussian army. Borís, speaking with deliberation, told them
+in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies and
+the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of his
+own about the facts he was recounting. For some time he engrossed the
+general attention, and Anna Pávlovna felt that the novelty she had
+served up was received with pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest
+attention of all to Borís’ narrative was shown by Hélène. She asked
+him several questions about his journey and seemed greatly interested in
+the state of the Prussian army. As soon as he had finished she turned to
+him with her usual smile.
+
+“You absolutely must come and see me,” she said in a tone that
+implied that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this was
+absolutely necessary.
+
+“On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure.”
+
+Borís promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a
+conversation with her, when Anna Pávlovna called him away on the
+pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.
+
+“You know her husband, of course?” said Anna Pávlovna, closing her
+eyes and indicating Hélène with a sorrowful gesture. “Ah, she is
+such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don’t mention him before
+her—please don’t! It is too painful for her!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+When Borís and Anna Pávlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte
+had the ear of the company.
+
+Bending forward in his armchair he said: “Le Roi de Prusse!” and
+having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.
+
+“Le Roi de Prusse?” Hippolyte said interrogatively, again laughing,
+and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pávlovna
+waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more
+she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the
+sword of Frederick the Great.
+
+“It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I...” she began, but
+Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: “Le Roi de Prusse...” and
+again, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and said no
+more.
+
+Anna Pávlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte’s friend, addressed him
+firmly.
+
+“Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?”
+
+Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
+
+“Oh, it’s nothing. I only wished to say...” (he wanted to repeat
+a joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that
+evening to get in) “I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight
+pour le Roi de Prusse!”
+
+Borís smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical
+or appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody
+laughed.
+
+“Your joke is too bad, it’s witty but unjust,” said Anna
+Pávlovna, shaking her little shriveled finger at him.
+
+“We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right principles.
+Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!” she said.
+
+The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on the
+political news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the
+evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.
+
+“You know N— N— received a snuffbox with the portrait last
+year?” said “the man of profound intellect.” “Why shouldn’t
+S— S— get the same distinction?”
+
+“Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor’s portrait is a reward but
+not a distinction,” said the diplomatist—“a gift, rather.”
+
+“There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg.”
+
+“It’s impossible,” replied another.
+
+“Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter....”
+
+When everybody rose to go, Hélène who had spoken very little all
+the evening again turned to Borís, asking him in a tone of caressing
+significant command to come to her on Tuesday.
+
+“It is of great importance to me,” she said, turning with a smile
+toward Anna Pávlovna, and Anna Pávlovna, with the same sad smile with
+which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Hélène’s wish.
+
+It seemed as if from some words Borís had spoken that evening about the
+Prussian army, Hélène had suddenly found it necessary to see him.
+She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he came on
+Tuesday.
+
+But on Tuesday evening, having come to Hélène’s splendid salon,
+Borís received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for
+him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to
+him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said unexpectedly
+and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face: “Come to dinner
+tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!”
+
+During that stay in Petersburg, Borís became an intimate in the
+countess’ house.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier. Everywhere one
+heard curses on Bonaparte, “the enemy of mankind.” Militiamen and
+recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of
+war came contradictory news, false as usual and therefore variously
+interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkónski, Prince Andrew, and
+Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.
+
+In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief
+then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout Russia.
+Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly noticeable
+since the time when he thought his son had been killed, he did not think
+it right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the Emperor
+himself, and this fresh opportunity for action gave him new energy
+and strength. He was continually traveling through the three provinces
+entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment of his duties, severe
+to cruel with his subordinates, and went into everything down to the
+minutest details himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in
+mathematics from her father, and when the old prince was at home went
+to his study with the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his
+grandfather called him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet
+nurse and nurse Sávishna in the late princess’ rooms and Princess
+Mary spent most of the day in the nursery, taking a mother’s place to
+her little nephew as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed
+passionately fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself
+to give her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel—as she
+called her nephew—and playing with him.
+
+Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the
+tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble monument
+brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread wings ready to
+fly upwards. The angel’s upper lip was slightly raised as though
+about to smile, and once on coming out of the chapel Prince Andrew and
+Princess Mary admitted to one another that the angel’s face reminded
+them strangely of the little princess. But what was still stranger,
+though of this Prince Andrew said nothing to his sister, was that in the
+expression the sculptor had happened to give the angel’s face, Prince
+Andrew read the same mild reproach he had read on the face of his dead
+wife: “Ah, why have you done this to me?”
+
+Soon after Prince Andrew’s return the old prince made over to him a
+large estate, Boguchárovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald Hills.
+Partly because of the depressing memories associated with Bald Hills,
+partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal to bearing with
+his father’s peculiarities, and partly because he needed solitude,
+Prince Andrew made use of Boguchárovo, began building and spent most of
+his time there.
+
+After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved not
+to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced
+and everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the
+recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his son
+seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old man,
+roused by activity, expected the best results from the new campaign,
+while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the war and
+secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.
+
+On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.
+Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father’s
+absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman who
+had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and letters
+for Prince Andrew.
+
+Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the
+letters to Princess Mary’s apartments, but did not find him there. He
+was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.
+
+“If you please, your excellency, Pétrusha has brought some papers,”
+said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting on a
+child’s little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he
+poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of water.
+
+“What is it?” he said crossly, and, his hand shaking
+unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the
+mixture onto the floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought
+it.
+
+There were in the room a child’s cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a
+table, a child’s table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew
+was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was burning on
+the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light did not fall
+on the cot.
+
+“My dear,” said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside
+the cot where she was standing, “better wait a bit... later...”
+
+“Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things
+off—and this is what comes of it!” said Prince Andrew in an
+exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.
+
+“My dear, really... it’s better not to wake him... he’s asleep,”
+said the princess in a tone of entreaty.
+
+Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed, wineglass
+in hand.
+
+“Perhaps we’d really better not wake him,” he said hesitating.
+
+“As you please... really... I think so... but as you please,” said
+Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion
+had prevailed. She drew her brother’s attention to the maid who was
+calling him in a whisper.
+
+It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the boy
+who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their household
+doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town, they had
+been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by sleeplessness
+and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one another and
+reproached and disputed with each other.
+
+“Pétrusha has come with papers from your father,” whispered the
+maid.
+
+Prince Andrew went out.
+
+“Devil take them!” he muttered, and after listening to the verbal
+instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his
+father’s letter, he returned to the nursery.
+
+“Well?” he asked.
+
+“Still the same. Wait, for heaven’s sake. Karl Ivánich always says
+that sleep is more important than anything,” whispered Princess Mary
+with a sigh.
+
+Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.
+
+“Confound you and your Karl Ivánich!” He took the glass with the
+drops and again went up to the cot.
+
+“Andrew, don’t!” said Princess Mary.
+
+But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his eyes,
+and stooped glass in hand over the infant.
+
+“But I wish it,” he said. “I beg you—give it him!”
+
+Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively
+and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed
+hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and sat
+down on a sofa in the next room.
+
+He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them mechanically he
+began reading. The old prince, now and then using abbreviations, wrote
+in his large elongated hand on blue paper as follows:
+
+Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful
+news—if it’s not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete
+victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing,
+and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a
+German—I congratulate him! I can’t make out what the commander at
+Kórchevo—a certain Khandrikóv—is up to; till now the additional
+men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and
+say I’ll have his head off if everything is not here in a week.
+Have received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle
+from Pétenka—he took part in it—and it’s all true. When
+mischief-makers don’t meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is
+said to be fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Kórchevo
+without delay and carry out instructions!
+
+Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It was
+a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilíbin. He folded it up
+without reading it and reread his father’s letter, ending with the
+words: “Gallop off to Kórchevo and carry out instructions!”
+
+“No, pardon me, I won’t go now till the child is better,” thought
+he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.
+
+Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the baby.
+
+“Ah yes, and what else did he say that’s unpleasant?” thought
+Prince Andrew, recalling his father’s letter. “Yes, we have gained
+a victory over Bonaparte, just when I’m not serving. Yes, yes, he’s
+always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!” And he began reading
+Bilíbin’s letter which was written in French. He read without
+understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment, what
+he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all
+else.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Bilíbin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and
+though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms,
+he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and
+self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilíbin wrote that the obligation of
+diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in Prince
+Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the bile he
+had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the army.
+The letter was old, having been written before the battle at
+Preussisch-Eylau.
+
+“Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz,” wrote
+Bilíbin, “as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I
+have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for me;
+what I have seen during these last three months is incredible.
+
+“I begin ab ovo. ‘The enemy of the human race,’ as you know,
+attacks the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have
+only betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but
+it turns out that ‘the enemy of the human race’ pays no heed to
+our fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the
+Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had begun,
+and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and installs
+himself in the palace at Potsdam.
+
+“‘I most ardently desire,’ writes the King of Prussia to
+Bonaparte, ‘that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my
+palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as circumstances
+allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that end. May I have
+succeeded!’ The Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to
+the French and lay down their arms at the first demand.
+
+“The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the
+King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... All
+this is absolutely true.
+
+“In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude,
+it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more,
+in war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have
+everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,
+a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success
+might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so
+young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozoróvski
+and Kámenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,
+Suvórov-like, in a kibítka, and is received with acclamations of joy
+and triumph.
+
+“On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails
+are taken to the field marshal’s room, for he likes to do everything
+himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those meant
+for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters addressed
+to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field marshal grows
+impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters from the Emperor
+to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts into one of his wild
+furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes the letters, opens
+them, and reads those from the Emperor addressed to others. ‘Ah! So
+that’s the way they treat me! No confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep
+an eye on me! Very well then! Get along with you!’ So he writes the
+famous order of the day to General Bennigsen:
+
+“‘I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the
+army. You have brought your army corps to Pultúsk, routed: here it is
+exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as
+you yourself reported to Count Buxhöwden yesterday, you must think of
+retreating to our frontier—which do today.’
+
+“‘From all my riding,’ he writes to the Emperor, ‘I have got a
+saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents
+my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the
+command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhöwden, having sent
+him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising him if there is
+a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior of Prussia, for only
+one day’s ration of bread remains, and in some regiments none at all,
+as reported by the division commanders, Ostermann and Sedmorétzki, and
+all that the peasants had has been eaten up. I myself will remain in
+hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly
+submit my report, with the information that if the army remains in its
+present bivouac another fortnight there will not be a healthy man left
+in it by spring.
+
+“‘Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is
+already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great and
+glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most gracious
+permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play the part of a
+secretary rather than commander in the army. My removal from the army
+does not produce the slightest stir—a blind man has left it. There are
+thousands such as I in Russia.’
+
+“The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,
+isn’t it logical?
+
+“This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly
+interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal’s departure
+it appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.
+Buxhöwden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen
+does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who
+are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the opportunity
+to fight a battle ‘on his own hand’ as the Germans say. He does so.
+This is the battle of Pultúsk, which is considered a great victory but
+in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as you know, have
+a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won or lost. Those who
+retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say; and according to
+that it is we who lost the battle of Pultúsk. In short, we retreat
+after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg with news of a
+victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive from Petersburg the
+post of commander in chief as a reward for his victory, does not give up
+the command of the army to General Buxhöwden. During this interregnum
+we begin a very original and interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is
+no longer, as it should be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to
+avoid General Buxhöwden who by right of seniority should be our chief.
+So energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an unfordable
+river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our enemy, who at
+the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhöwden. General Buxhöwden was all
+but attacked and captured by a superior enemy force as a result of one
+of these maneuvers that enabled us to escape him. Buxhöwden pursues
+us—we scuttle. He hardly crosses the river to our side before we
+recross to the other. At last our enemy, Buxhöwden, catches us and
+attacks. Both generals are angry, and the result is a challenge on
+Buxhöwden’s part and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen’s. But at the
+critical moment the courier who carried the news of our victory at
+Pultúsk to Petersburg returns bringing our appointment as commander in
+chief, and our first foe, Buxhöwden, is vanquished; we can now turn
+our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But as it turns out, just at
+that moment a third enemy rises before us—namely the Orthodox Russian
+soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat, biscuits, fodder, and whatnot!
+The stores are empty, the roads impassable. The Orthodox begin looting,
+and in a way of which our last campaign can give you no idea. Half the
+regiments form bands and scour the countryside and put everything
+to fire and sword. The inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals
+overflow with sick, and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even
+attack our headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a
+battalion to disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off
+my empty portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give
+all commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much
+fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other.”
+
+At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while,
+in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust
+Bilíbin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When he
+had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away. It was
+not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life out
+there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his eyes,
+rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what he
+had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he
+thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized with
+alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he was
+reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and opened it.
+
+Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from him
+with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the cot.
+
+“My dear,” he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind
+him.
+
+As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was
+seized by an unreasoning panic—it occurred to him that the child was
+dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.
+
+“All is over,” he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his
+forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find it
+empty and that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the
+curtain aside and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could not
+find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about till he
+lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and was smacking
+his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.
+
+Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had
+already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught him,
+tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The soft
+forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand; even
+the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was not dead,
+but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent. Prince Andrew
+longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart, this helpless
+little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him, gazing at his
+head and at the little arms and legs which showed under the blanket. He
+heard a rustle behind him and a shadow appeared under the curtain of
+the cot. He did not look round, but still gazing at the infant’s face
+listened to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was Princess Mary,
+who had come up to the cot with noiseless steps, lifted the curtain,
+and dropped it again behind her. Prince Andrew recognized her without
+looking and held out his hand to her. She pressed it.
+
+“He has perspired,” said Prince Andrew.
+
+“I was coming to tell you so.”
+
+The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his forehead
+against the pillow.
+
+Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain her
+luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy that
+were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him, slightly
+catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a warning gesture
+and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain as if not wishing
+to leave that seclusion where they three were shut off from all the
+world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away, ruffling his hair
+against the muslin of the curtain.
+
+“Yes, this is the one thing left me now,” he said with a sigh.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went to the
+Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs, taking with
+him full directions which he had written down for his own guidance as to
+what he should do on his estates.
+
+When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office
+and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that steps
+would be taken immediately to free his serfs—and that till then they
+were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies
+were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs,
+punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals,
+asylums, and schools were to be established on all the estates. Some of
+the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among them) listened with
+alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young count was displeased
+with their management and embezzlement of money, some after their first
+fright were amused by Pierre’s lisp and the new words they had not
+heard before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the master talked, while
+the cleverest among them, including the chief steward, understood from
+this speech how they could best handle the master for their own ends.
+
+The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre’s intentions,
+but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go into
+the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.
+
+Despite Count Bezúkhov’s enormous wealth, since he had come into an
+income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a year,
+Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him
+an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
+following budget:
+
+About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank, about
+30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town house,
+and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was given in
+pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was sent to
+the countess; about 70,000 went for interest on debts. The building of a
+new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in each of the last
+two years, and he did not know how the rest, about 100,000 rubles, was
+spent, and almost every year he was obliged to borrow. Besides this the
+chief steward wrote every year telling him of fires and bad harvests,
+or of the necessity of rebuilding factories and workshops. So the first
+task Pierre had to face was one for which he had very little aptitude or
+inclination—practical business.
+
+He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But
+he felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these
+consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with
+them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the state
+of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the necessity of
+paying off the debts and undertaking new activities with serf labor,
+to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand, Pierre demanded that
+steps should be taken to liberate the serfs, which the steward met by
+showing the necessity of first paying off the loans from the Land Bank,
+and the consequent impossibility of a speedy emancipation.
+
+The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested selling
+the forests in the province of Kostromá, the land lower down the river,
+and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all of which
+operations according to him were connected with such complicated
+measures—the removal of injunctions, petitions, permits, and so
+on—that Pierre became quite bewildered and only replied:
+
+“Yes, yes, do so.”
+
+Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled him
+to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only tried
+to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The steward
+for his part tried to pretend to the count that he considered these
+consultations very valuable for the proprietor and troublesome to
+himself.
+
+In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened to make
+his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer, the
+largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre’s greatest
+weakness—the one to which he had confessed when admitted to the
+Lodge—were so strong that he could not resist them. Again whole days,
+weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush and were as much
+occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches, and balls, giving him
+no time for reflection, as in Petersburg. Instead of the new life he had
+hoped to lead he still lived the old life, only in new surroundings.
+
+Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not
+fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of moral
+life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two—morality and the
+love of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he fulfilled
+another of the precepts—that of reforming the human race—and had
+other virtues—love of his neighbor, and especially generosity.
+
+In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way he
+intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his orders
+had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom God had
+entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.
+
+The chief steward, who considered the young count’s attempts almost
+insane—unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the serfs—made
+some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation of the serfs
+as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large
+buildings—schools, hospitals, and asylums—on all the estates
+before the master arrived. Everywhere preparations were made not for
+ceremonious welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but for just
+such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and the bread
+and salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of his
+master, would touch and delude him.
+
+The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna
+carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on
+Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more picturesque
+than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and touchingly
+grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere were receptions,
+which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a joyful feeling in the
+depth of his heart. In one place the peasants presented him with bread
+and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, asking permission,
+as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits he had conferred on them,
+to build a new chantry to the church at their own expense in honor
+of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In another place the women with
+infants in arms met him to thank him for releasing them from hard
+work. On a third estate the priest, bearing a cross, came to meet
+him surrounded by children whom, by the count’s generosity, he was
+instructing in reading, writing, and religion. On all his estates Pierre
+saw with his own eyes brick buildings erected or in course of erection,
+all on one plan, for hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon
+to be opened. Everywhere he saw the stewards’ accounts, according to
+which the serfs’ manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the
+touching thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue
+coats.
+
+What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him
+with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter and
+Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter’s day,
+and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had begun
+the chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in that
+villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know that
+since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his land, they
+did still harder work on their own land. He did not know that the priest
+who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by his exactions, and
+that the pupils’ parents wept at having to let him take their children
+and secured their release by heavy payments. He did not know that the
+brick buildings, built to plan, were being built by serfs whose manorial
+labor was thus increased, though lessened on paper. He did not know
+that where the steward had shown him in the accounts that the serfs’
+payments had been diminished by a third, their obligatory manorial work
+had been increased by a half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit
+to his estates and quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which
+he had left Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his
+“brother-instructor” as he called the Grand Master.
+
+“How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,”
+thought Pierre, “and how little attention we pay to it!”
+
+He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at
+receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do
+for these simple, kindly people.
+
+The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly
+through the naïve and intelligent count and played with him as with
+a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,
+pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above all
+the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it was.
+
+Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be
+difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would
+happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though reluctantly,
+on what he thought right. The steward promised to do all in his power to
+carry out the count’s wishes, seeing clearly that not only would the
+count never be able to find out whether all measures had been taken for
+the sale of the land and forests and to release them from the Land Bank,
+but would probably never even inquire and would never know that the
+newly erected buildings were standing empty and that the serfs continued
+to give in money and work all that other people’s serfs gave—that is
+to say, all that could be got out of them.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest state
+of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of visiting his
+friend Bolkónski, whom he had not seen for two years.
+
+Boguchárovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among
+fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The
+house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and
+with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that
+stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which were
+a few fir trees.
+
+The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, a
+bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular façade
+still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly laid
+out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps and a
+water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were straight,
+the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore an impress of
+tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in reply
+to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a small newly
+built lodge close to the pond. Antón, a man who had looked after Prince
+Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, said that the
+prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little anteroom.
+
+Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house after
+the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend in
+Petersburg.
+
+He quickly entered the small reception room with its still-unplastered
+wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone farther, but Antón
+ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.
+
+“Well, what is it?” came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
+
+“A visitor,” answered Antón.
+
+“Ask him to wait,” and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed
+back.
+
+Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to
+face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre
+embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek
+and looked at him closely.
+
+“Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad,” said Prince Andrew.
+
+Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with surprise. He
+was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly and there was a
+smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and lifeless and in
+spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give them a joyous
+and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner, paler, and more
+manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre till he got used
+to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow indicating prolonged
+concentration on some one thought.
+
+As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged separation,
+it was long before their conversation could settle on anything. They
+put questions and gave brief replies about things they knew ought to
+be talked over at length. At last the conversation gradually settled on
+some of the topics at first lightly touched on: their past life, plans
+for the future, Pierre’s journeys and occupations, the war, and so
+on. The preoccupation and despondency which Pierre had noticed in his
+friend’s look was now still more clearly expressed in the smile
+with which he listened to Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful
+animation of the past or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would
+have liked to sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not.
+The latter began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his
+enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince
+Andrew’s presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views,
+which had been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour.
+He checked himself, fearing to seem naïve, yet he felt an irresistible
+desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite
+different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.
+
+“I can’t tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly
+know myself again.”
+
+“Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then,” said Prince
+Andrew.
+
+“Well, and you? What are your plans?”
+
+“Plans!” repeated Prince Andrew ironically. “My plans?” he said,
+as if astonished at the word. “Well, you see, I’m building. I mean
+to settle here altogether next year....”
+
+Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew’s face,
+which had grown much older.
+
+“No, I meant to ask...” Pierre began, but Prince Andrew interrupted
+him.
+
+“But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your travels
+and all you have been doing on your estates.”
+
+Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as far
+as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had been
+made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre’s story of what he
+had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he listened
+not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what Pierre was
+telling him.
+
+Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend’s company
+and at last became silent.
+
+“I’ll tell you what, my dear fellow,” said Prince Andrew, who
+evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, “I am
+only bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am going back
+to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of course you know
+her already,” he said, evidently trying to entertain a visitor with
+whom he now found nothing in common. “We will go after dinner. And
+would you now like to look round my place?”
+
+They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the political
+news and common acquaintances like people who do not know each other
+intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and interest only of
+the new homestead he was constructing and its buildings, but even here,
+while on the scaffolding, in the midst of a talk explaining the future
+arrangements of the house, he interrupted himself:
+
+“However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and then
+we’ll set off.”
+
+At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre’s marriage.
+
+“I was very much surprised when I heard of it,” said Prince Andrew.
+
+Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said
+hurriedly: “I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you
+know it is all over, and forever.”
+
+“Forever?” said Prince Andrew. “Nothing’s forever.”
+
+“But you know how it all ended, don’t you? You heard of the duel?”
+
+“And so you had to go through that too!”
+
+“One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man,” said
+Pierre.
+
+“Why so?” asked Prince Andrew. “To kill a vicious dog is a very
+good thing really.”
+
+“No, to kill a man is bad—wrong.”
+
+“Why is it wrong?” urged Prince Andrew. “It is not given to man
+to know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will
+err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.”
+
+“What does harm to another is wrong,” said Pierre, feeling with
+pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was
+roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought him to
+his present state.
+
+“And who has told you what is bad for another man?” he asked.
+
+“Bad! Bad!” exclaimed Pierre. “We all know what is bad for
+ourselves.”
+
+“Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is
+something I cannot inflict on others,” said Prince Andrew, growing
+more and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new outlook
+to Pierre. He spoke in French. “I only know two very real evils in
+life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of those evils.
+To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole philosophy
+now.”
+
+“And love of one’s neighbor, and self-sacrifice?” began Pierre.
+“No, I can’t agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and
+not to have to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for
+myself and ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least
+trying” (Pierre’s modesty made him correct himself) “to live for
+others, only now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I
+shall not agree with you, and you do not really believe what you are
+saying.” Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.
+
+“When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you’ll get on with her,”
+he said. “Perhaps you are right for yourself,” he added after
+a short pause, “but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for
+yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found happiness
+when you began living for others. I experienced just the reverse. I
+lived for glory.—And after all what is glory? The same love of others,
+a desire to do something for them, a desire for their approval.—So I
+lived for others, and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I have
+become calmer since I began to live only for myself.”
+
+“But what do you mean by living only for yourself?” asked Pierre,
+growing excited. “What about your son, your sister, and your
+father?”
+
+“But that’s just the same as myself—they are not others,”
+explained Prince Andrew. “The others, one’s neighbors, le prochain,
+as you and Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and
+evil. Le prochain—your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good.”
+
+And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He
+evidently wished to draw him on.
+
+“You are joking,” replied Pierre, growing more and more excited.
+“What error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even
+doing a little—though I did very little and did it very badly? What
+evil can there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people like
+ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea of God and truth
+beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed in
+a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
+consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying
+of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be
+rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum
+for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a
+peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
+them rest and leisure?” said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. “And
+I have done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done
+something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a good
+action, and more than that, you can’t make me believe that you do not
+think so yourself. And the main thing is,” he continued, “that I
+know, and know for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is the
+only sure happiness in life.”
+
+“Yes, if you put it like that it’s quite a different matter,” said
+Prince Andrew. “I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build
+hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what’s
+right and what’s good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by
+us. Well, you want an argument,” he added, “come on then.”
+
+They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which served
+as a veranda.
+
+“Come, let’s argue then,” said Prince Andrew, “You talk of
+schools,” he went on, crooking a finger, “education and so forth;
+that is, you want to raise him” (pointing to a peasant who passed by
+them taking off his cap) “from his animal condition and awaken in him
+spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only
+happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of.
+I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my
+means. Then you say, ‘lighten his toil.’ But as I see it, physical
+labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as
+mental activity is to you or me. You can’t help thinking. I go to bed
+after two in the morning, thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss
+about till dawn, because I think and can’t help thinking, just as
+he can’t help plowing and mowing; if he didn’t, he would go to the
+drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical
+labor but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical
+idleness, but would grow fat and die. The third thing—what else was
+it you talked about?” and Prince Andrew crooked a third finger. “Ah,
+yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit, he is dying, and you come and
+bleed him and patch him up. He will drag about as a cripple, a burden to
+everybody, for another ten years. It would be far easier and simpler for
+him to die. Others are being born and there are plenty of them as it is.
+It would be different if you grudged losing a laborer—that’s how I
+regard him—but you want to cure him from love of him. And he does not
+want that. And besides, what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone!
+Killed them, yes!” said he, frowning angrily and turning away from
+Pierre.
+
+Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that it was
+evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he spoke
+readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long time. His
+glance became more animated as his conclusions became more hopeless.
+
+“Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!” said Pierre. “I don’t
+understand how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments
+myself not long ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I
+collapsed so that I don’t live at all—everything seems hateful to
+me... myself most of all. Then I don’t eat, don’t wash... and how is
+it with you?...”
+
+“Why not wash? That is not cleanly,” said Prince Andrew; “on the
+contrary one must try to make one’s life as pleasant as possible.
+I’m alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best I
+can without hurting others.”
+
+“But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would sit
+without moving, undertaking nothing....”
+
+“Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do
+nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me the
+honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to get
+out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary
+qualifications for it—the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness
+necessary for the position. Then there’s this house, which must be
+built in order to have a nook of one’s own in which to be quiet. And
+now there’s this recruiting.”
+
+“Why aren’t you serving in the army?”
+
+“After Austerlitz!” said Prince Andrew gloomily. “No, thank you
+very much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active
+Russian army. And I won’t—not even if Bonaparte were here at
+Smolénsk threatening Bald Hills—even then I wouldn’t serve in the
+Russian army! Well, as I was saying,” he continued, recovering his
+composure, “now there’s this recruiting. My father is chief in
+command of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active
+service is to serve under him.”
+
+“Then you are serving?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+He paused a little while.
+
+“And why do you serve?”
+
+“Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men of
+his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he has too
+energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited power that he is
+terrible, and now he has this authority of a commander in chief of
+the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had been two hours late
+a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster’s clerk at Yúkhnovna
+hanged,” said Prince Andrew with a smile. “So I am serving because
+I alone have any influence with my father, and now and then can save him
+from actions which would torment him afterwards.”
+
+“Well, there you see!”
+
+“Yes, but it is not as you imagine,” Prince Andrew continued. “I
+did not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk
+who had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been
+very glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father—that again
+is for myself.”
+
+Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered feverishly
+while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there was no
+desire to do good to his neighbor.
+
+“There now, you wish to liberate your serfs,” he continued; “that
+is a very good thing, but not for you—I don’t suppose you ever had
+anyone flogged or sent to Siberia—and still less for your serfs. If
+they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don’t suppose they are
+any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and the
+stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it is
+a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon
+themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being
+able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people I
+pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You
+may not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those
+traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more irritable,
+become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot restrain
+themselves and grow more and more miserable.”
+
+Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
+that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his
+father’s case.
+
+He did not reply.
+
+“So that’s what I’m sorry for—human dignity, peace of mind,
+purity, and not the serfs’ backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave
+as you may, always remain the same backs and foreheads.”
+
+“No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you,” said
+Pierre.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and drove to
+Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the silence now and
+then with remarks which showed that he was in a good temper.
+
+Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making in
+his husbandry.
+
+Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
+apparently immersed in his own thoughts.
+
+He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/evaluation/intro/spell.outtime b/evaluation/intro/spell.outtime
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e69de29bb

From 6aa88d81e38a6f78bbfb53021cc719d086a38261 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: root <stao042906@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2024 11:44:16 -0800
Subject: [PATCH 3/3] Updates after rebase

---
 compiler/pash_compiler.py | 13 ++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/compiler/pash_compiler.py b/compiler/pash_compiler.py
index 04b5db9eb..a81bc21f2 100644
--- a/compiler/pash_compiler.py
+++ b/compiler/pash_compiler.py
@@ -55,6 +55,7 @@ def main_body():
         config.load_config(args.config_path)
 
     runtime_config = config.config["distr_planner"]
+    config_parallelization_success = False
 
     ## Read any shell variables files if present
     vars_dict = env_vars_util.read_vars_file(args.var_file, config.BASH_VERSION)
@@ -94,6 +95,8 @@ def compile_ir(ir_filename, compiled_script_file, args, compiler_config):
         ret = compile_optimize_output_script(
             ir_filename, compiled_script_file, args, compiler_config
         )
+        if ret is None:
+            log("[PaSh Info] No parallelization opportunities detected for this region.")
     except ExpansionError as e: 
         log("WARNING: Exception caught because some region(s) are not expandable and therefore unparallelizable:", e) 
         raise NotAllRegionParallelizableError()
@@ -104,9 +107,9 @@ def compile_ir(ir_filename, compiled_script_file, args, compiler_config):
     except (AdjLineNotImplementedError, NotImplementedError) as e: 
         log("WARNING: Exception caught because some part is not implemented:", e)
         log(traceback.format_exc())
-    except Exception as e:
-        log("WARNING: Exception caught:", e)
-        log(traceback.format_exc())
+    except Exception:
+        log("[PaSh Warning] Compilation failed due to an unexpected error.", level=0)
+        log(traceback.format_exc(), level=1)
 
     return ret
 
@@ -234,6 +237,8 @@ def optimize_irs(asts_and_irs, args, compiler_config):
         if isinstance(ast_or_ir, IR):
             ## Assert that the graph that was returned from compilation is valid
             assert ast_or_ir.valid()
+            if ast_or_ir.valid():
+                config_parallelization_success = True
 
             # log(ir_node)
             # with cProfile.Profile() as pr:
@@ -279,6 +284,8 @@ def choose_and_apply_parallelizing_transformations(
     graph, fan_out, batch_size, r_split_batch_size
 ):
     parallelizer_map = choose_parallelizing_transformations(graph)
+    if any(parallelizer_mapp.values()):
+        config.parallelization_success = True
     apply_parallelizing_transformations(
         graph, parallelizer_map, fan_out, batch_size, r_split_batch_size
     )