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The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that Moscow was
burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to look. Sonya and
Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only Natasha and
the countess remained in the room. Petya was no longer with the family, he had
gone on with his regiment which was making for Troitsa. |
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The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. Natasha,
pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the icons just where she
had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to her father's words. She was
listening to the ceaseless moaning of the adjutant, three houses off. |
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"Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the yard chilled
and frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful
glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to her
cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind. |
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But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to her
and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had been in this
condition of stupor since the morning, when Sonya, to the surprise and annoyance
of the countess, had for some unaccountable reason found it necessary to tell
Natasha of Prince Andrew's wound and of his being with their party. The countess
had seldom been so angry with anyone as she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and
begged to be forgiven and now, as if trying to atone for her fault, paid
unceasing attention to her cousin. |
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"Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said she. |
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"What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes, Moscow." |
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And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her, she turned
her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was evident that she
could not see anything, and again settled down in her former attitude. |
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"But you didn't see it!" |
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"Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to
be left in peace. |
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Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow
nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of importance to Natasha. |
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The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess went
up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand as she was
wont to do when Natasha was ill, then touched her forehead with her lips as if
to feel whether she was feverish, and finally kissed her. |
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"You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better lie
down," said the countess. |
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"Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once," said
Natasha. |
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When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was seriously
wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first asked many
questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it serious? And could she
see him? But after she had been told that she could not see him, that he was
seriously wounded but that his life was not in danger, she ceased to ask
questions or to speak at all, evidently disbelieving what they told her, and
convinced that say what she might she would still be told the same. All the way
she had sat motionless in a corner of the coach with wide open eyes, and the
expression in them which the countess knew so well and feared so much, and now
she sat in the same way on the bench where she had seated herself on arriving.
She was planning something and either deciding or had already decided something
in her mind. The countess knew this, but what it might be she did not know, and
this alarmed and tormented her. |
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"Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed." |
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A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame Schoss
and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor. |
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"No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied
irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open window the
moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She put her head out into
the damp night air, and the countess saw her slim neck shaking with sobs and
throbbing against the window frame. Natasha knew it was not Prince Andrew who
was moaning. She knew Prince Andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a
part of the hut across the passage; but this dreadful incessant moaning made her
sob. The countess exchanged a look with Sonya. |
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"Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the countess,
softly touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie down." |
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"Oh,
yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha, and began hurriedly
undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat. |
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When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket, she sat
down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made up on the floor,
jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the front, and began
replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers rapidly unplaited, replaited,
and tied up her plait. Her head moved from side to side from habit, but her
eyes, feverishly wide, looked fixedly before her. When her toilet for the night
was finished she sank gently onto the sheet spread over the hay on the side
nearest the door. |
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"Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said Sonya. |
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"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down,"
she added crossly, and buried her face in the pillow. |
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The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay down.
The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left in the room. But in
the yard there was a light from the fire at Little Mytishchi a mile and a half
away, and through the night came the noise of people shouting at a tavern
Mamonov's Cossacks had set up across the street, and the adjutant's unceasing
moans could still be heard. |
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For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds that reached
her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First she heard her
mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed under her, then Madame
Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's gentle breathing. Then the countess
called to Natasha. Natasha did not answer. |
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"I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly. |
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After short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one
replied. |
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Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing. Natasha did
not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the quilt, was
growing cold on the bare floor. |
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As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in a crack
in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near by. The shouting in
the tavern had died down; only the moaning of the adjutant was heard. Natasha
sat up. |
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"Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered. |
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No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed herself, and
stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her slim, supple, bare feet.
The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping cautiously from one foot to the other
she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and grasped the cold door
handle. |
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It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically against
all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking with alarm and terror
and overflowing with love. |
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She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the cold,
damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed her. With her
bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened the door into
the part of the hut where Prince Andrew lay. It was dark in there. In the
farthest corner, on a bench beside a bed on which something was lying, stood a
tallow candle with a long, thick, and smoldering wick. |
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From the moment she had been told that of Prince Andrew's wound and his
presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him. She did not know why she had
to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt the more convinced that it
was necessary. |
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All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now that
the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might see. How was he
maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that incessant moaning of the
adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her imagination he was that
terrible moaning personified. When she saw an indistinct shape in the corner,
and mistook his knees raised under the quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a
horrible body there, and stood still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew
her forward. She cautiously took one step and then another, and found herself in
the middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man- Timokhin- was lying
in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two others- the doctor and a
valet- lay on the floor. |
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The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by the
pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange apparition of
a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap. The valet's sleepy,
frightened exclamation, "What do you want? What's the matter?" made
Natasha approach more swiftly to what was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a
man as that body looked, she must see him. She passed the valet, the snuff fell
from the candle wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside
the quilt, and such as she had always seen him. |
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He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his
glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his neck, delicate
as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar of his shirt, gave him a
peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had never seen on him before.
She went up to him and with a swift, flexible, youthful movement dropped on her
knees. |
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He smiled and held out his hand to her. |
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Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the ambulance
station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the inflammation of his
bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's opinion sure to carry him off.
But on the seventh day he ate with pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and
the doctor noticed that his temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness
that morning. The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he
had remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself asked to
be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his removal into the hut had
made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness. When he had been placed on
his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with closed eyes. Then he opened
them and whispered softly: "And the tea?" His remembering such a small
detail of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse,
and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He was
dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient did not die now,
he would do so a little later with greater suffering. Timokhin, the red-nosed
major of Prince Andrew's regiment, had joined him in Moscow and was being taken
along with him, having been wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They
were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his coach. man, and two
orderlies. |
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They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking with
feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to understand and
remember something. |
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"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked. |
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Timokhin crept along the bench to him. |
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"I am here, your excellency." |
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"How's your wound?" |
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"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?" |
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Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something. |
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"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked. |
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"What book?" |
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"The Gospels. I haven't one." |
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The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he was
feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but reasonably,
and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was uncomfortable and
in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak with which he was covered
and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from
the wound, began examining that dreadful place. The doctor was very much
displeased about something and made a change in the dressings, turning the
wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew unconscious and delirious
from the agony. He kept asking them to get him the book and put it under him. |
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"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I have not
got one. Please get it for me and put it under for a moment," he pleaded in
a piteous voice. |
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The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands. |
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"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the valet who was
pouring water over his hands. "For just one moment I didn't look after
you... It's such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it." |
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"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under
him!" said the valet. |
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The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was the
matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he asked to be
carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at Mytishchi. After growing
confused from pain while being carried into the hut he again regained
consciousness, and while drinking tea once more recalled all that had happened
to him, and above all vividly remembered the moment at the ambulance station
when, at the sight of the sufferings of a man he disliked, those new thoughts
had come to him which promised him happiness. And those thoughts, though now
vague and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he had now a
new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the
Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position in
which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts, and when
he came to himself a third time it was in the complete stillness of the night.
Everybody near him was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage;
someone was shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the
table, on the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the
bed and around the candle beside him, the wick of which was charred and had
shaped itself like a mushroom. |
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His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,
feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the power and
will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to fix his whole
attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from the deepest reflections to
say a civil word to someone who comes in and can then return again to his own
thoughts. But Prince Andrew's mind was not in a normal state in that respect.
All the powers of his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but they
acted apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images occupied him
simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly began to work with a vigor,
clearness, and depth it had never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in
the midst of its work it would turn to some unexpected idea and he had not the
strength to turn it back again. |
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"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
deprived," he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut,
gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness lying
beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act on man- a
happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. Every man can understand
it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible only for God. But how did God
enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?" |
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And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrew
heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) a soft whispering
voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating "piti-piti-piti," and
then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti," and
"ti-ti" once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above
the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being erected out of
slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered music. He felt that
he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so that this airy
structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept collapsing and again
slowly rising to the sound of whispered rhythmic music- "it stretches,
stretches, spreading out and stretching," said Prince Andrew to himself.
While listening to this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out
and the construction of this edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red
halo round the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing
of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly
touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did
not destroy the structure, though it knocked against the very region of his face
where it was rising. But besides this there was something else of importance. It
was something white by the door- the statue of a sphinx, which also oppressed
him. |
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"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought,
"and that's my legs, and that is the door, but why is it always stretching
and drawing itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti' and
'piti-piti-piti'...? That's enough, please leave off!" Prince Andrew
painfully entreated someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to
the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and force. |
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"Yes- love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love
which loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some
reason, but the love which I- while dying- first experienced when I saw my enemy
and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very essence
of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love
one's neighbors, to love one's enemies, to love everything, to love God in all
His manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with human love,
but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why I experienced such
joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?... |
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"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can destroy it.
It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have I hated in my life?
And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did her." And he vividly
pictured to himself Natasha, not as he had done in the past with nothing but her
charms which gave him delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her
soul. And he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now
understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the
cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were possible for me to see
her once more! Just once, looking into those eyes to say..." |
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"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the
fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of
reality and delirium in which something particular was happening. In that world
some structure was still being erected and did not fall, something was still
stretching out, and the candle with its red halo was still burning, and the same
shirtlike sphinx lay near the door; but besides all this something creaked,
there was a whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the
door. And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natasha of
whom he had just been thinking. |
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"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince
Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained
before him with the force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew wished to
return that former world of pure thought, but he could not, and delirium drew
him back into its domain. The soft whispering voice continued its rhythmic
murmur, something oppressed him and stretched out, and the strange face was
before him. Prince Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his
senses, he moved a little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a
dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water he lost consciousness.
When he came to himself, Natasha, that same living Natasha whom of all people he
most longed to love with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to
him, was kneeling before him. He realized that it was the real living Natasha,
and he was not surprised but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her knees
(she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining
her sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it something
quivered. |
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Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand. |
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"You?" he said. "How fortunate!" |
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With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on her knees
and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and began kissing it, just
touching it lightly with her lips. |
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"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at
him. "Forgive me!" |
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"I love you," said Prince Andrew. |
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"Forgive...!" |
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"Forgive what?" he asked. |
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"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a
scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more rapidly, just
touching it with her lips. |
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"I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew,
lifting her face with his hand so as to look into her eyes. |
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Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face, with its
swollen lips, was more than plain- it was dreadful. But Prince Andrew did not
see that, he saw her shining eyes which were beautiful. They heard the sound of
voices behind them. |
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Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor. Timokhin,
who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had long been watching
all that was going on, carefully covering his bare body with the sheet as he
huddled up on his bench. |
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"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed.
"Please go away, madam!" |
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At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
daughter's absence, knocked at the door. |
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Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the room
and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed. |
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From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at every
halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never left the wounded
Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected from a young
girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a wounded man. |
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Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew die in
her daughter's arms during the journey- as, judging by what the doctor said, it
seemed might easily happen- she could not oppose Natasha. Though with the
intimacy now established between the wounded man and Natasha the thought
occurred that should he recover their former engagement would be renewed, no
one- least of all Natasha and Prince Andrew- spoke of this: the unsettled
question of life and death, which hung not only over Bolkonski but over all
Russia, shut out all other considerations. |
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On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching, the
clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt uncomfortable on his body,
and his mind had a dim consciousness of something shameful he had done the day
before. That something shameful was his yesterday's conversation with Captain
Ramballe. |
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It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of doors.
Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an engraved stock which
Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, he remembered where he was and what
lay before him that very day. |
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"Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't
make his entry into Moscow before noon." |
|
|
Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him, but
hastened to act. |
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|
After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to go out.
But it then occurred to him for the first time that he certainly could not carry
the weapon in his hand through the streets. It was difficult to hide such a big
pistol even under his wide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed in his belt or
under his arm. Besides, it had been discharged, and he had not had time to
reload it. "No matter, dagger will do," he said to himself, though
when planning his design he had more than once come to the conclusion that the
chief mistake made by the student in 1809 had been to try to kill Napoleon with
a dagger. But as his chief aim consisted not in carrying out his design, but in
proving to himself that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he
could to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a green
sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the pistol, and hid it
under his waistcoat. |
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|
Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his head,
Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or meeting the
captain, and passed out into the street. |
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The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much indifference the
evening before, had greatly increased during the night. Moscow was on fire in
several places. The buildings in Carriage Row, across the river, in the Bazaar
and the Povarskoy, as well as the barges on the Moskva River and the timber
yards by the Dorogomilov Bridge, were all ablaze. |
|
|
Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and from there to
the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had long before decided that
the deed should should be done. The gates of most of the houses were locked and
the shutters up. The streets and lanes were deserted. The air was full of smoke
and the smell of burning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and timid
faces, and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walking in the
middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the French looked at Pierre with
surprise. Besides his height and stoutness, and the strange morose look of
suffering in his face and whole figure, the Russians stared at Pierre because
they could not make out to what class he could belong. The French followed him
with astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the other
Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid no attention to
them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who were explaining something to
some Russians who did not understand them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not
know French. |
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Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel
standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the shout was
threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man's musket as he raised
it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on the other side of the street. He
heard nothing and saw nothing of what went on around him. He carried his
resolution within himself in terror and haste, like something dreadful and alien
to him, for, after the previous night's experience, he was afraid of losing it.
But he was not destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even
had he not been hindered by anything on the way, his intention could not now
have been carried out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than four hours
previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the Kremlin, and was now
sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal study in the Kremlin, giving
detailed and exact orders as to measures to be taken immediately to extinguish
the fire, to prevent looting, and to reassure the inhabitants. But Pierre did
not know this; he was entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and was
tortured- as those are who obstinately undertake a task that is impossible for
them not because of its difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their
natures- by the fear of weakening at the decisive moment and so losing his
self-esteem. |
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|
Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by instinct
and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the Povarskoy. |
|
|
As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser- he
even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose from
under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the streets and they were
more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that something unusual was happening
around him, did not realize that he was approaching the fire. As he was going
along a foot path across a wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side
and the gardens of Prince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard
the desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if awakening from a
dream and lifted his head. |
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|
By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of household
goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and trunks. On the ground,
beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer young, with long, prominent upper
teeth, and wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman, swaying to and fro and
muttering something, was choking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve,
dressed in dirty short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother with a
look of stupefaction on their pale frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy
of about seven, who wore an overcoat and an immense cap evidently not his own,
was crying in his old nurse's arms. A dirty, barefooted maid was sitting on a
trunk, and, having undone her pale-colored plait, was pulling it straight and
sniffing at her singed hair. The woman's husband, a short, round-shouldered man
in the undress uniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers and
showing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forward over his
temples, with expressionless face was moving the trunks, which were placed one
on another, and was dragging some garments from under them. |
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As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his feet. |
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"Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends...
help us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... My
daughter! My youngest daughter is left behind. She's burned! Ooh! Was it for
this I nursed you.... Ooh!" |
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"Don't, Mary Nikolievna!" said her husband to her in a low
voice, evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. "Sister must
have taken her, or else where can she be?" he added. |
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"Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing
to weep. "You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Another man
would have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and neither a man
nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," she went on, addressing
Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire broke out alongside, and blew
our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and we rushed to collect our things. We ran
out just as we were.... This is what we have brought away.... The icons, and my
dowry bed, all the rest is lost. We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O
Lord!..." and again she began to sob. "My child, my dear one! Burned,
burned!" |
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"But where was she left?" asked Pierre. |
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From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man
might help her. |
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"Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "My
benefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, show him the
way!" she cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and still farther
exposing her long teeth. |
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"Show me the way, show me, I... I'll do it," gasped Pierre
rapidly. |
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The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her plait,
sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre felt as if he
had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his head higher, his eyes
shone with the light of life, and with swift steps he followed the maid,
overtook her, and came out on the Povarskoy. The whole street was full of clouds
of black smoke. Tongues of flame here and there broke through that cloud. A
great number of people crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of
the street stood a French general saying something to those around him. Pierre,
accompanied by the maid, was advancing to the spot where the general stood, but
the French soldiers stopped him. |
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"On ne passe pas!"* cried a voice. |
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*"You can't pass! |
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"This way, uncle," cried the girl. "We'll pass through the
side street, by the Nikulins'!" |
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Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with her. She
ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left, and, passing three
houses, turned into a yard on the right. |
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"It's here, close by," said she and, running across the yard,
opened a gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small wooden
wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One of its sides had
fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames issued from the openings of
the windows and from under the roof. |
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As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air and
involuntarily stopped. |
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"Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked. |
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"Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it,
that was our lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my precious
little missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight of the fire felt that
she too must give expression to her feelings. |
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Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he
involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house that was as
yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and around which swarmed a
crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not realize what these men, who were
dragging something out, were about; but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a
peasant with a blunt saber and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he
vaguely understood that looting was going on there, but he had no time to dwell
on that idea. |
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The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings, the
whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the people, and the sight
of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick black clouds and now soaring up
with glittering sparks, with here and there dense sheaves of flame (now red and
now like golden fish scales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke
and rapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effects of a
conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him because at the sight of
the fire he felt himself suddenly freed from the ideas that had weighed him
down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other
side of the lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which was still
standing, when just above his head he heard several voices shouting and then a
cracking sound and the ring of something heavy falling close beside him. |
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Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some Frenchmen
who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with metal articles. Other
French soldiers standing below went up to the drawer. |
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"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to
Pierre. |
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"There's a child in that house. Haven't you seen a child?"
cried Pierre. |
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"What's he talking about? Get along!" said several voices, and
one of the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take from them
some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved threateningly
toward him. |
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"A child?" shouted a Frenchman from above. "I did hear
something squealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his brat that the fellow is
looking for. After all, one must be human, you know...." |
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"Where is it? Where?" said Pierre. |
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"There! There!" shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing
to the garden at the back of the house. "Wait a bit- I'm coming down." |
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And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with a spot
on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window on the ground
floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with him into the garden. |
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"Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades.
"It's getting hot." |
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When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman pulled
Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space where a three-year-old
girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat. |
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"There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!" said the
Frenchman. "Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you
know!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his
comrades. |
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Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going to take
her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly, scrofulous-looking child,
unattractively like her mother, began to yell and run away. Pierre, however,
seized her and lifted her in his arms. She screamed desperately and angrily and
tried with her little hands to pull Pierre's hands away and to bite them with
her slobbering mouth. Pierre was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such
as he had experienced when touching some nasty little animal. But he made an
effort not to throw the child down and ran with her to the large house. It was
now, however, impossible to get back the way he had come; the maid, Aniska, was
no longer there, and Pierre with a feeling of pity and disgust pressed the wet,
painfully sobbing child to himself as tenderly as he could and ran with her
through the garden seeking another way out. |
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Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back with
his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the Povarskoy. He did
not at first recognize the place from which he had set out to look for the
child, so crowded was it now with people and goods that had been dragged out of
the houses. Besides Russian families who had taken refuge here from the fire
with their belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of
clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family of that
civil servant in order to restore the daughter to her mother and go to save
someone else. Pierre felt that he had still much to do and to do quickly.
Glowing with the heat and from running, he felt at that moment more strongly
than ever the sense of youth, animation, and determination that had come on him
when he ran to save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her
little hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some little
wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight smile. He fancied he
saw something pathetically innocent in that frightened, sickly little face. |
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He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left them. He
walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various faces he met.
Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family consisting of a very
handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new, cloth-covered, sheepskin coat
and new boots, an old woman of similar type, and a young woman. That very young
woman seemed to Pierre the perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply
outlined, arched, black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of
her long, beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the
crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright lilac shawl
on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out onto the snow. She was
sitting on some bundles a little behind the old woman, and looked from under her
long lashes with motionless, large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her.
Evidently she was aware of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck
Pierre and, hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to look at her.
When he had reached the fence, still without finding those he sought, he stopped
and looked about him. |
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With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous than
before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered about him. |
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"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry
yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him. |
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Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat who had
been sitting there with her other children, and he asked whether anyone knew
where she had gone. |
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"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon,
addressing a pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have
mercy!" he added in his customary bass. |
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"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the
morning. That must be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!" |
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"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a
house serf. |
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"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre. |
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"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these
wolves swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers. |
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"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon. |
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"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept on lamenting
and crying," continued the woman. "It's she. Here, this way!" |
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But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds been
intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was looking at the
Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone up to them. One of
these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied round the waist with a
rope. He had a nightcap on his head and his feet were bare. The other, whose
appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered,
fair-haired man, slow in his movements and with an idiotic expression of face.
He wore a woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian
boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the Armenians
and, saying something, immediately seized the old man by his legs and the old
man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in the frieze gown stopped in
front of the beautiful Armenian girl and with his hands in his pockets stood
staring at her, motionless and silent. |
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"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly
to the woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give her back to them, give
her back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on
the ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the Armenian family. |
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The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had
secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other. The old man
was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre caught but a glimpse
of this, his whole attention was directed to the Frenchman in the frieze gown
who meanwhile, swaying slowly from side to side, had drawn nearer to the young
woman and taking his hands from his pockets had seized her by the neck. |
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The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same attitude,
with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or feel what the soldier was
doing to her. |
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While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing from her
neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the young woman, clutching
at her neck, screamed piercingly. |
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"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious
voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him aside. |
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The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing down
the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward Pierre. |
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"Voyons, Pas de betises!"* he cried. |
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*"Look here, no nonsense!" |
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Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing and his
strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted Frenchman and, before
the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked him off his feet and hammered him
with his fists. Shouts of approval were heard from the crowd around, and at the
same moment a mounted patrol of French Uhlans appeared from round the corner.
The Uhlans came up at a trot to Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them.
Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only remembered
beating someone and being beaten and finally feeling that his hands were bound
and that a crowd of French soldiers stood around him and were searching him. |
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"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words Pierre
understood. |
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"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the barefooted
soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. "All right, you can tell all
about it at the court-martial." Then he turned to Pierre. "Do you
speak French?" |
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Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply. His face
probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something in a whisper and
four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves on both sides of Pierre. |
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"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again, keeping at a
distance from Pierre. "Call the interpreter." |
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A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks, and by
his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to be a French
salesman from one of the Moscow shops. |
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"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter,
after a searching look at Pierre. |
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"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked the
officer. "And ask him who he is," he added. |
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"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "You
must answer the chief." |
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"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner- take me!"
Pierre suddenly replied in French. |
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"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well then,
march!" |
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A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood the
pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol started she
moved forward. |
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"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she.
"And the little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's
not theirs?" said the woman. |
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"What does that woman want?" asked the officer. |
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Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight of the
little girl he had saved. |
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"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my
daughter whom I have just saved from the flames," said he.
"Good-by!" And without knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him,
he went along with resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers. |
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The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various streets
of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage, and especially to
catch the incendiaries who, according to the general opinion which had that day
originated among the higher French officers, were the cause of the
conflagrations. After marching through a number of streets the patrol arrested
five more Russian suspects: a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a
peasant, and a house serf, besides several looters. But of all these various
suspected characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all.
When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the Zubov
Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed apart under
strict guard. |
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